Staff Sgt. Clinton Romesha A few days ago the President announced that Army Staff Sgt. Clinton L. Romesha will receive the Medal of Honor for his actions at Combat Outpost Keating in Nuristan Province, Afghanistan in October of 2009. He was part of a combined force of about seventy Americans, forty-two Afghans, and a couple of Latvians that came under a coordinated and well-armed attack by around 300 insurgents. Eight Americans were killed during the battle that lasted most of the day. The Afghans who were with the Americans fled, leaving the American and Latvian Soldiers to fight alone. Romesha…
Author Jenn Rafael
I like memories. I just wish I could remember them. The other day I lost a memory game to my four-year-old. Legitimately. It got me to thinking that maybe I don’t have a good memory. When I think back on my life, at least the parts I can recollect, a pattern begins to emerge. All the experiences, when looked at collectively, point right to an inability to remember things. I can’t remember much from college, but that can be attributed to beer. The Navy days are a little clearer, and one of the first things that comes to mind is…
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Videos by the troops are getting harder to come by, but here’s a good one. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EjLbVmXIqg[/youtube] “A cover of “Call Me Maybe” performed by US Army Infantry Soldiers in Kunar Province, Afghanistan. Original by Carly Rae Jepsen. Directed, filmed, and edited by the troops as a morale boost for our Soldiers here and our families/FRG back home. See you in just a few more months, and thanks for all your support!”
They suffer in silence, for the most part, but their pain is much deeper than any of us can imagine. They were there, at home, when the Chaplains arrived. The vague worries that had been an undercurrent in their lives turned in an instant into bottomless anguish. They wanted a do-over. They wanted a second chance to finish interrupted conversations, hold the hugs that could have been longer, say the words that should have been said. Their memories stopped, limited forevermore to the time until that moment. They are the families of the fallen. They are called Gold Star families,…
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(from Terrific Top 10) I saw a picture today of a family standing and smiling in front of the Mayan Temple. They took the shot on December 21, 2012. They were there, at the epicenter of the end-of-the-world frenzy, on the exact date that life as we know it was supposed to end. Perfect. There are only so many times in our lives when the circumstances and timing align so that we are in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. Hale-Bopp was my moment. Remember the comet Hale-Bopp? On March 24, 1997 my wife and I sat…
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It never ceases to amaze me how thousands of young people can live in close quarters and survive. But they do, and although we have all heard stories of the bug that never dies on deployment, for the most part people stay pretty healthy. It is not like that with kids in school. Schools are petri dishes with desks. One step inside a pre-school classroom and you are stepping into an evil scientist’s lab. Well, I stepped into one. I miss deployment.
