They Don't Get Used to Dying When They Fall.

I'm going to tell you something private about me.
I mourn each and every one of the fallen.
One by one.
Whenever I see their name.
I've been doing it since before I went to high school.
I saw a news item that said the 100th soldier had been killed in a place called Viet Nam. (It was two words then, not Vietnam...)

First, I read their entry, their little three line, four line, datasheet:

Rian Ferguson, 22, Taylor, SC.

They usually print the rank and outfit too.
I don't pay much attention to those.

Then I say: "I sorry you died, Rian."

I look at where they were from:

Mark Lawton was out of Hayden, Colorado.
Eddie Menyweather, was from LA.

I say: "The folks in Hayden will miss you, Mark."
I say: "LA's a quieter place without you, Eddie."

I say: "So sorry, man, so sorry, guy,"

And once in awhile now:

"So sorry, babe, sorry sorry, babygirl."

I don't give'em much time really, maybe thirty seconds, that's all.

Just read their name, see where they were from, grieve a little.

I think about what their lives were like,
what might have been for them if not for fortune,
their loves, their kids, their kid's kids.

Then I go about my life, but I never get used to the loss.

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Long ago and far away, in late night breakfast joint in San Angelo, a poet friend of mine was in an argument about, what else?, the war, although this was the war with Chu Lai, DaNang and Long Binh in the paragraphs, when someone said "...that after six or seven years of this war the American people were getting used to it."
"Well," said Paul," the GI's, the GIreen's, the ones who are dying everyday, they don't get used to it. They don't get used to dying when they fall."
He put all that in a song, now lost, with him. About six months after the late night breakfast debate he and a crew went down in the Arctic Ocean while on a recon mission.
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I don't know why I'm telling you all this. The whole casket pictures thing is on the news this morning, but you can see the faces and the names every day right here :

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/iraq/casualties/facesofthefallen.htm


Say a word or two, would you?

Joe