If I die before you wake

[RutnNStrutn]

Man, this is a beautiful tribute to our troops. Please take the time to watch it and then say a prayer for our brave soldiers. http://209.85.48.9/10262/6/emo/14_1_107v%255B1%255D.gif

http://www.flashdemo.net/gallery/wake/index.htm

[Randy Clark]

thanks rut got to email that to my father in law.sheryl's sister's husband is a major in the marines stationed in afganistan

[FLAWaterfowler]

Strange that you posted this today...the war has been burning in my mind a lot today...tributes, of a sort...

Three stories on NPR today...

One..a nineteen year old girl, pregnant with child, who is burying her husband this week on Cape Cod. They interviewed his father-in-law, a Ukranian Immigrant...his voice choking with pride as he described the character of the young man who wed his daughter, went to war, and paid the ultimate price for our freedom...

Another one on a MEDEVAC team from Arkansas... a battle hardened medic equally choked up as he recounted the butchery of Iraq as they took two children to hospital with schrapnel wounds from an insurgents grenade...comforting her....her begging him not to leave her when they reached safety...

Our soldiers fight with honor. With valor. Our enemies butcher innocents -- workers in office buildings...women at the market trying to feed their families....old men beheaded for offering a GI tea.

A third one about a young Captain whose company was the only thing standing in the way of Shia butchering Sunni... listening to a frantic (Sunni) Iraqi elder tell him that the Americans were the only ones that they could turn to..that they could trust to protect them from their own people...

and from life....

Remembering the story told by one of my students' mothers, a Bosnian immigrant, who watched American fighters pounding Serb positions..watching as six American infantrymen stare down nearly a hundred Serb troops who were intent on murdering an entire village...she pointed to our flag and told me that those colors saved her family, and that the greatest honor her family could have would be for her own sons to wear that flag on their shoulders someday...the excitement in her voice as she talked about gaining citizenship...

Looking at the seven pictures on my classroom's corkboard of young men (and one woman) who were students of mine...kids from all backgrounds - from the country to the ghetto, who proudly serve.... five have combat experience now. Two purple hearts. And they still think to drop me a line when they can... or come back to my classroom in their dress blues and tell my kids that , indeed, this land is worth fighting for... And me thanking God that he has kept them all safe in his hands...

And now another one who graduated last year telling me she's joined the air force and wants to become a flight nurse...she'll be an angel of mercy, allright.

Talking with a custodial parent about her 'son' ... an Afghan kid who was basically a slave... "well, ma'am, he seems to be having a little trouble with the AP reading" -- then finding out that this kid has had, literally, four years of education in his life and that he studies night and day to 'catch up'...

Diver hunting the last Thursday of the season with Yankee Mike..a Navy Rescue Swimmer whose been accepted to be a patrol boat skipper along the Tigris and Euphrates...GodSpeed

My little ritual of watching the News Hour most every night, and saying a silent thank you as the day's casualties roll on the closing credits...people of all backgrounds, all colors, all creeds, one flag. Praying that the pictures on the screen wont match those on my board...

I may not agree with all aspects of this war, but as long as my 'kids' are in it...im behind them I00%.

Land of the free. Home of the brave. Indeed. And In-Deed

James

[Randy Clark]

your right waterfowler it becomes even more amazing what we take for granted after visiting or talking to people in other parts of the world.i wish i could remember clearly the saying (that i can sleep peaceful to night because others are out doing what the work that most of us dont want to do.) maybe someone else will know what i am trying to say and post it