Posted on 09/09/2005 5:51:12 PM PDT by Forgiven_Sinner
Soldiers, commanders, children, parents: The human face of a natural disaster.
The e-mail came from a reader, U.S. Marine Corps, retired: So, I was driving down I-20 from NE Columbia [S.C.] toward the city when I began to pass this huge convoy of Army trucks, Humvees, etc. The convoy was in the right lane. I was driving in the left. The convoy vehicles were loaded with tough-looking young soldiers, and each of them had the familiar "AA" (All American) patches of the famous 82nd Airborne Division stitched on their sleeves. Of course--being such an enormously long convoy of these young paratroopers traveling west on I-20--it was obvious they were from Fort Bragg, N.C., and they were heading toward the Katrina damaged Gulf Coast, where other 82nd paras had already been deployed. The convoy took up the entire right lane of the interstate for several miles. . . .
But what made it such a wonderful sight was that in the left lane, civilian drivers and passengers (young, old, black, white, some driving Mercedes, some driving smoke-belching old rust-traps) were slowing by each Army vehicle and waving and giving the thumbs up. And the soldiers were waving back . . . some smiling, some trying to look tough, a few were drinking Cokes. A few months ago, these same guys were fighting in Iraq. . . . Now they were roaring down the highway in a long green line in central South Carolina . . . in the lane next to me. They looked tough, but most looked as if they were barely old enough to shave. Some of them probably had tubes of Clearasil (or whatever teenagers use today to fight acne) stowed away in their field packs.
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God how I love our soldiers.
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