Warriors
I interviewed a fascinating man the other night. He was a 22-year veteran of the Army, and spent time fighting in both Korea and Vietnam. Talking with him was both sobering and inspiring.
He told me about a battle in Korea, a battle in which thousands upon thousands of soldiers were killed. He got choked up as he talked about it .... some 54 years later, it still made this man in his 70s cry to talk about the things he'd seen.
That kind of war is something that my generation knows nothing about. We've lost just over 1,000 men and women in a year and half's time in Iraq, and while that loss is heartbreaking, gutwrenching and terrifying, it is such a far cry from wars of other decades, wars in which we lost hundreds, even thousands of people, in a week's time. I'm so thankful that I am blessed to live in a time when those kinds of casualties haven't been endured, and I pray that my generation will never have to see a war like that.
I cannot begin to fathom what a soldier on the battlefield goes through. I can't imagine the horror of seeing your friends die right in front of you, or of having to pull a trigger to kill another human. What a terrifying, awful experience.
What really blows my mind is that Jesse has been there, that he has walked in those boots, seen those sights, pulled that trigger. The man that I love has seen and endured things that I cannot begin to imagine. It's a strange thing, sharing one's life with a warrior. Knowing someone so intimately, and yet being on the outside of an experience that only the one who lived it can truly understand. No matter how well I know Jesse, no matter how many war stories he shares with me, I will never be able to comprehend what he's seen and been through. It's a different world. Something so far removed from our life together. Something that he will always have apart from me.
He told me about a battle in Korea, a battle in which thousands upon thousands of soldiers were killed. He got choked up as he talked about it .... some 54 years later, it still made this man in his 70s cry to talk about the things he'd seen.
That kind of war is something that my generation knows nothing about. We've lost just over 1,000 men and women in a year and half's time in Iraq, and while that loss is heartbreaking, gutwrenching and terrifying, it is such a far cry from wars of other decades, wars in which we lost hundreds, even thousands of people, in a week's time. I'm so thankful that I am blessed to live in a time when those kinds of casualties haven't been endured, and I pray that my generation will never have to see a war like that.
I cannot begin to fathom what a soldier on the battlefield goes through. I can't imagine the horror of seeing your friends die right in front of you, or of having to pull a trigger to kill another human. What a terrifying, awful experience.
What really blows my mind is that Jesse has been there, that he has walked in those boots, seen those sights, pulled that trigger. The man that I love has seen and endured things that I cannot begin to imagine. It's a strange thing, sharing one's life with a warrior. Knowing someone so intimately, and yet being on the outside of an experience that only the one who lived it can truly understand. No matter how well I know Jesse, no matter how many war stories he shares with me, I will never be able to comprehend what he's seen and been through. It's a different world. Something so far removed from our life together. Something that he will always have apart from me.
posted by Rebekah at 9:56 PM
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