Troop Tributes
On Memorial Day I want to highlight some stories that do an especially
thoughtful and sensitive job of saluting our troops and showing the
pain and grief they suffer.
Last month
Jim Sheeler of the
Rocky Mountain News
wrote an inspiring profile of David Rozelle, who lost his right foot to
a land mine on the border between Iraq and Kuwait. Sheeler's
"Amputee in it for Long Run" describes how Rozelle runs marathons, even with a prosthetic leg. Sheeler is a master at capturing vivid details:
"His hat is stitched with the name of the Army running team he created - a team composed mostly of amputees:
'Missing (Parts) In Action,' the hat reads.
Alongside is the team's motto: 'Some Assembly Required.'"
In
"Iconic Marine Is at Home but Not at Ease," David Zucchino of the
Los Angeles Times profiles
Blake Miller, who became a Marine Corps icon when a photographer shot a
picture of him with a Marlboro in his mouth after an all-night
firefight. A year later, Blake is back in his Kentucky home, fighting
the demons of post-traumatic stress disorder. Zucchino does an
excellent job of using quotes to let his sources tell the story in
their own words. Check out this passage where Zucchino describes how
Blake's wife reacted when she first saw the photo:
When Jessica saw
the photo on the front page of the local paper, she had not heard from
Blake in a week."I was glad to know he was alive, but I couldn't stop
crying," she said. "The scared look on his face, his eyes — it tore me
up."
And in
"Tears, Tributes, and a Simple Memorial," Jenna Russell and
Deborah Turcotte of
The Boston Globe
describe the work of the Maine Troop Greeters, a volunteer group that
has welcomed more than 300,000 troops to the Bangor, Maine, airport as
they travel to and from Afghanistan and Iraq. In addition to welcoming
the military personnel with cookies and hugs, the Maine Troop Greeters
keep a plastic binder that lists all the American troops who have died
in these wars. Russell and Turcotte show how this simple binder, now
filled with more than 300 pages, 10 names to a page, has become a
memorial for the returning troops, a way for them to check to see if
their friends and loved ones have survived their tours of duty.