Posted on 11/16/2003 11:56:26 PM PST by kattracks
I recently appeared on the November 11, 2003 episode of the Montel Williams show. The program featured guests who had lost loved ones in the war in Iraq. One of the guests, Kathy Dowdy, recalled hearing that her husband, 1st Sgt. Robert Dowdy, had been killed: "They found 11 shallow graves. One of the bodies was my husband. He was a first sergeant of 507th Main--Maintenance Unit. Couldn't ask for a better husband. Gave up his life for us. He took somebody else's place going to Iraq. He wasn't supposed to go to Kuwait at all," recalled Dowdy, tears streaming silently down her cheek.1st Sgt. Dowdy was just one of 141 American servicemen who have been killed in Iraq since President Bush declared an end to the major fighting on May 1. His sacrifice reminds us that war is a horror where one is ordered to kill strangers, to run in the face of enemy fire, to ignore the sight of his friends as they crumple to the ground. There is a scene in Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, in which a young man has his arm blown off. He stumbles around, gazing at his shattered limb, unsure of what to do. War is confusion. War is detached horror. I mention this only to point out that those Americans who grapple with war, do so to preserve man's best, his institutions of freedom, democracy, and individuality. Or as Mrs. Dowdy put it, "This is what career soldiers do."
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In 1970 he was a 2nd LT, Forward Observer, humping his radio and ruck through the stinking bush in Vietnam. He was there a year, supporting his company as they made a series of 4 week patrols. He made alot of war shots with his radio.
The war ends, and he gets out for awhile. But he returns to serve in the Guard. Those were bad years for a Guardsman, low pay, and low respect from everyone from civilian to active Army. Yet he kept at it and rose to the rank of Major.
As so many others like him, he did not make the cut for LTC, and so left the service again. After several years he returned to enlist as a Sgt E-5 simply to finish out his time and be able to retire with 20 years.
He was 6 months short of the goal when his team of FO's were activated for the Terrorist War.
So now there he is, without serious complaint,performing his 2nd combat deployment, 30 years after his 1st.
He is a friend and a former commrad, and I wish him well.
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