there i go again...chills!!


my dad served in the army from 54 to 57 & rose to the rank of sargeant in less than 2 years.
his army buddies were life long friends & one of them was honorary pallbearer at my dad's funeral.
imagine our shock & surprise when he actually made the long drive from minnesota to be there to salute my dad one final time.

Great story's being told here. True sign of the comradship(Sp?) build up in the army.

Continue the stories for as far as you want to tell them. I love reading these.

I agree Rock.
It's pretty amazing to read these stories.
To me it personalizes the service men......makes you appreciate even more what they went through.

About 6 months before my Dad was shipped out, I was born in Toledo, Ohio.
My mother and several Army wives followed their husbands to Biloxi Mississippi where their husbands were leaving from.
They rented and shared homes and apartments in the area. Housing was hard to come by in the immediate area so my mother and two of her friends rented an old house about 30 miles west of Biloxi.
Being officers wives they had use of jeeps or could get rides into the big city.

I'm sure none of you have ever heard of Kiln, Mississippi, but that is where I spent one year of my life.....even though I don't remember at all.
(I wonder if I'm related to #4)

The world is a mysterious place.
I wonder if this is where the lord intended for these words to be placed in perpetuity... well, I'm just going to go ahead and say that this spot beats the heck out of a scrapbook.

I will not go into the details.
A very badly wounded Fedayeen Saddam Soldier.
Ad Diwaniiyah, Iraq.
April Fool's day, 2003.
He gestured for some water, I gave it to him.
I also gave him some candy.
The corpsmen were treating him.
I kneeled by his side.
Our "indie" (indigenous multilingual) came over, also.
He asked for pen and paper, I gave it to him (the paper is a napkin.)
He gave me this back.

http://i412.photobucket.com/albums/pp207/dfosterf/Itookthisfromayoungman.jpg

Those were his last words.
He was a veteran, too.
My prayers for him and his loved ones. A little late on the veteran's day thing, but something inside me told me to share this.

Foster.. thank you for sharing that.. sometimes we forget that all sides of war are still one thing.. human.

Very touching story Fosterf.

Usually the people fighting seem to be the ones with the least hatred to the enemy.

I know that there's a veterans day thread already, but this one really deserved a bump, as well.

Happy veterans day to you in the US.

A Fedayeen was one of the most interesting people I ever met in Iraq too.

For transcripts of letters some Iraqis gave me, point your browser to http://www.nonstopdrivel.com.
I probably still have the originals somewhere, unless I threw them away to avoid their being confiscated.