Sense of pride in US heartlands despite the grief

The Telegraph (U.K.) ^ | 08/02/03 | Toby Harnden

[Pokey78]

The moment Joe Childers saw the legs of a US marine officer through the screen panel of the front door he knew his son Shane was dead.

With a sense of dread Mr Childers and his wife, Judy, had heard on television that a marine lieutenant had been killed in the first hours of the Iraq war.

Then the officer arrived to bring them the news.

"All I saw was his shoes and about that much red stripe the side of his trousers," said Mr Childers haltingly, his hands six inches apart. "I knew even before they knocked.

"I knew he was likely to be in the first unit in there. And he was and it was him."

Lt Shane Childers, 30, became the first American combat casualty of the conflict when he was hit by an AK47 bullet as he led his platoon in an assault to secure a pumping station in the Rumeila oilfields of southern Iraq.

Gazing out from his Wyoming ranch towards the Bighorn mountains, Mr Childers considered the soldiers dying each day in Iraq. "It's tragic and I hope we don't lose any more," he said.

"But it's still a drop in the bucket to what we've lost in previous engagements. And this needed to be done.

"The war was just when we went in and it's even more just now that we stick it out because if we don't it's all for nought."

Since Lt Childers's death, 165 more US soldiers have been killed by enemy action, 52 of them since May 1, when President George W Bush declared that major combat operations in Iraq were over. The drip, drip of casualties has prompted comparisons with the Vietnam War. News coverage has focused on angry military wives demanding the return of their husbands and demoralised soldiers griping about their lot.

But in places like the Badlands of Wyoming, there is in the main a stoic acceptance of the casualties and a recognition that Americans will continue to die for some time.

Mr Childers, 54, views it as a duty only America can perform, much like the "white man's burden" borne by Britain in the days of Empire.

"The Germans didn't want to do anything because they were making too much money building mansions there, and the French are just the French - they just got to be debonair or whatever."

In the nearby Wild West town of Cody, named after William "Buffalo Bill" Cody, it was difficult to find anyone who was against the war or who thought America should pull out now.

"The way I look at it, we were acting in self-defence," said Fred Benton, 37, wearing a Stetson and sitting outside the Custom Cowboy Shop. "After September 11, we weren't going to just sit back and take it no more."

Sitting at the wooden bar of the Irma Hotel, donated by Queen Victoria to the lodging house named after Cody's daughter, Bonnie Mosley, 42, a teacher visiting from Iowa, said Americans had been led to believe the war would be easy. "It breaks my heart to see the pictures of the handsome young men who have been killed," she said.

"But war is war and it cannot be done without casualties. On balance, I think taking out Saddam Hussein was justified, though I question that every day."

Polls show domestic support for US action in Iraq is solid. Around seven in 10 Americans agree that Saddam's regime should have been toppled and nearly six in 10 think troops should stay in Iraq as long as necessary, even if the reconstruction process takes five years.

The anti-war group Military Families Speak Out has been heavily publicised.

It claims to have about 600 members, but there are roughly 147,000 American troops in Iraq.

Most significantly, the number of dead does not even begin to bear comparison with Vietnam, where 55,000 were killed at a rate of 275 a week.

At the Vietnam War memorial in Cody, where 138 names are carved in granite, notes and mementoes are still left for departed loved ones.

"You are in my heart Terry Larson. I love you. Your little sister Jolene," reads the message on a jar of faded plastic flowers.

A Harley Davidson baseball cap and a Colt .45 cartridge case have been placed on it, along with several American flags.

For generations, families like that of Mr Childers, who was stationed in Iran and briefly taken hostage in Teheran in 1977, have served in far-flung places, sometimes as much for economic reasons as for love of country.

"Uncle Dick, my mother's brother, was in North Africa and Sicily so long that when he returned to West Virginia he had a four-year-old daughter he'd never seen," the rancher said.

"Uncle Bob, he went in the navy and fought the tail end of the war.

"He was off Okinawa and saw the kamikazes get shot out of the sky and stuff. Uncle Jim was in the Philippines."

His other son, Sam, served in the US navy and his daughter's husband is at present in Kuwait.

Four months after his son's death, the grief remains raw. "I miss him. When we came home, in every direction, every thing I looked at and thought of, there was some memory to it."

There is some comfort in the knowledge that Lt Childers, a former enlisted man who served in the Gulf conflict only weeks after boot camp, had been prepared for what might happen.

"He knew and I knew," said Mr Childers. "We didn't discuss it. The nearest he said was, 'If something happens to me get down to California and get my stuff'."

Today, his son's red truck, still with its military pass on the windscreen, is parked outside the house. "The last letter we got was two or three weeks after he was killed. He was ready and just waiting for the word to go."

A few days after his son died on the battlefield, Mr Childers looked up into the big Wyoming sky and saw a bald eagle, America's emblem, soar and then disappear.

He is not a particularly religious man, but perhaps, he thought, it might just be a sign.

[Pokey78]

Ping for a good article.

[mdittmar]

Honor them.

[cavtrooper21]

Makes me want to go out and slap one of those "anti war" protesters upside the head.
This is the other side that we need to see when we start thinking of war as "bloodless" and "glorious"
May the Lord grant this man and his family comfort and strength.
May we NEVER forget his son, who laid his life at the altar of our liberty and freedom.
Semper Fidelis, Lt Childers, may you rest in peace.

[cavtrooper21]

Sad USMC ping.

[Plutarch]

Not nearly as preening, sneering as would be a NYT feature.

[section9]

And where do we get such brave young men?

All around us, of course.

I have dwelt upon the greatness of Athens because I want to show you that we are contending for a higher prize than those who enjoy none of these privileges, and to establish by manifest proof the merit of these men whom I am now commemorating. Their loftiest praise has been already spoken. For in magnifying the city I have magnified them, and men like them whose virtues made her glorious. And of how few Hellenes 1 can it be said as of them, that their deeds when weighed in the balance have been found equal to their fame! I believe that a death such as theirs has been the true measure of a man's worth; it may be the first revelation of his virtues, but is at any rate their final seal. For even those who come short in other ways may justly plead the valor with which they have fought for their country; they have blotted out the evil with the good, and have benefited the state more by their public services than they have injured her by their private actions. None of these men were enervated by wealth or hesitated to resign the pleasures of life; none of them put off the evil day in the hope, natural to poverty, that a man, though poor, may one day become rich. But, deeming that the punishment of their enemies was sweeter than any of these things, and that they could fall in no nobler cause, they determined at the hazard of their lives to be honorably avenged, and to leave the rest. They resigned to hope their unknown chance of happiness; but in the face of death they resolved to rely upon themselves alone. And when the moment came they were minded to resist and suffer, rather than to fly and save their lives; they ran away from the word of dishonor, but on the battlefield their feet stood fast, and in an instant, at the height of their fortune, they passed away from the scene, not of their fear, but of their glory.

-Pericles' Funeral Oration to the Athenians from The Pelloponnesian War, by Thucydides

Be Seeing You,

Chris

[ALOHA RONNIE]

NEVER FORGET



.."TELL MY WIFE I LOVE HER" =


..~WE WERE SOLDIERS~..


http://www.WeWereSoldiers.com

http://www.lzxray.com



NEVER FORGET

[aculeus]

Respectful bump.

[Eaker]

God Bless Lt. Childers.

I am watching the History Channel and B-17's are dropping out of the sky.

Our soldiers are forged from a different material and a much higher temperature than the anti-war protesters.

Us.

Them.

More of us.

Bless all of our Soldiers.

Eaker

[Eaker]

Ping.

[damncat]

Heroism is seldom without sacrifice. God Bless his family.

[jhw61]

Well, I was o.k. until I got to the bald Eagle part. Then the dam burst. God Bless Our Troops.

[summer]

You're right; it is a good article. Very touching. Thanks for the ping, Pokey78.

[Freedom4US]

Bonnie Mosley, 42, a teacher visiting from Iowa, said Americans had been led to believe the war would be easy.

As a native Iowan, let me be the first to apologize for Miss Mosley, she's obviously not feeling well. Get well soon, Bonnie.

[Freedom4US]

Where do those granola-crunchers get their money, surely not from the sweat of their brow or any honest work. We've seen their kind before. Better men (and women, for that matter) selflessly devote themselves and put themselves in harms way - and these morons don't even have the self respect to take a g%@@$%n shower.

[rockfish59]

A sad note from the archives!

[rockfish59]

I'm a fat B-otch who can't get a job!

[Ursus arctos horribilis]

Bless them all, the Childers family is a large clan, I worked in the oil patch with some of them. Wyoming is a different mindset from the left and east coasts, like night and day. I retired from Marathon Oil Company in Cody back in 91, it remains G_D's country.

[Eaker]

Where do those granola-crunchers get their money?

The saudis, iran, syria, despots in africa, drug dealers in south and central America, cair, al queda, the coyotes running mexicans north, the coyotes running terrorists south from canada, dnc, the socialists party, the french, germans, belgians, hollywood, russia, canada, je$$e jack$on, al $harpton, bill and hil clinton, etc.

This is off the top of my head. The lack of capital letters is intentional.

Anger is a given.

Eaker