A father’s heart…

I wrote this several months ago, but I felt compelled to revive it.  The point I was trying to get across, the emotions I was feeling have been driven home by recent events.  My good friends, the Earp family from Brinson, are living with what I had envisioned.

Take a moment, thank a soldier, and most of all, lift a prayer for our military and their families.

PFC Ian Edge, US Army, I salute you.

A few months back ,  my wife, youngest son and I were in Columbus Ga., visiting my sister and her husband, and spent the day shopping and sight seeing around town. For those who don’t know, Columbus is also home of Ft. Benning, the Army’s Infantry Training Center, and soon to be the Armor Training Center as well.
All our young men who are training to become Infantry soldiers are brought to Ft. Benning, and learn the craft of being soldiers, and the art of warfare, before they are sent to the various post around the world to protect America’s interest. It is a grueling task they are set to, fighting the heat, loneliness, and physical exertion required to go from soft civilians to hard, ready to fight soldiers. Some take it a notch higher, and go on to become Airborne qualified, and even further to become Ranger qualified, and a very few are to become Special Forces, or Green Beret. These young men come from all walks of life, and volunteer to do this for what ever reasons known only to themselves.
These are the men who are going into battle in Iraq and Afghanistan, or where ever else the Army and our government deems necessary to send them, and these same men are the ones we will see on the news, being killed, maimed, or worse. They know what they are facing, because believe me, they are not dumb, no far from it. These are some of the most intelligent young men ever to fight for our nation, and we all owe them a debt for their service.

During our day in Columbus, we encountered these young men constantly, at the Infantry Museum, at the mall, in the restaurants, everywhere we were. There was a graduation Saturday morning of a recent class of recruits, and their families were with them, proud mothers and fathers, young brides, kid brothers and sisters, grandparents, all happy to see their soldiers finish their training, yet dreading the soon to come separation, which was inevitable. I even remarked to my wife, that the soil of Ft Benning and Columbus had to be literally saturated with tears from so many years from families as they watched their young men go off to war.

And as I, an old fat veteran who was fortunate enough to have served in a period that allowed me safe passage, viewed these soldiers, these young men, my heart swelled with pride in them, but at the same time, as a father, a father who has lost a son, my heart was heavy with fear.
Because no matter how tough they are, no matter how brave they are, they are still some fathers little boy, some mothers baby.

And even though none of them are my son, my flesh and bone, they are still all of our sons, and I grieve for each one of them who will be lost or injured.

And as a father, I want to weep. 

 Even now, months later, it’s  still on my mind bad, I  keep thinking back to those boys in uniform I was rubbing elbows with up there in Columbus. I keep thinking about how some of those fellows are not going to come back to their loved ones, and some are going to come back damaged in some way. And that just cuts me to the quick. I have a son in the military, he is in the Navy, and to a large degree, that makes him a lot safer than those Infantrymen. And while I am glad he is safe, I almost feel guilty that I’m not facing the same risk that the parents of those other boys are.
And believe me, when I say boys, I mean no disrespect to them, but to an old buzzard like me, they are boys, same age as my son, give or take a few years. And when I look at my son, I still see him as he was 20 years ago, and when I looked at them, I saw the same. They are so young, and the thought of them being injured, maimed or killed, just rips at my soul.
I wanted to speak to each of them, and tell them how much I wanted them to be safe, how I wanted them not to have to go, but I couldn’t. They would have thought I’d lost my mind. They are just as I was twenty years ago, full of self assurance, knowing that it would be someone else who was injured or killed, not them. At that age you are sure that you are bullet proof, it can’t happen to you, it will be the other guy. But somebody has to be “the other guy”.