Brothers In Arms

From Boots in Baghdad:

"Tonight I was sitting with an Iraqi soldier when he began telling me about getting shot by an insurgent. He remembered laying on the operating table and the doctor telling him, “When you wake up, you might not have your leg.” He said when he woke up and saw he still had his leg he began to cry. The doctor and the nurse joined him in tears of relief.By the time he had finished another soldier had joined us. They discussed the loved ones they had lost to the insurgency and told me of a more recent attack on some Iraqi soldiers. Then he looked at me and said, “these insurgents worship the same God that I do, they speak the same language that I do. You worship a different God, speak a different language, and come from the other side of the world. Yet, despite our differences you and your friends are here to help me and my family, while these insurgents try to kill me and my family.”

We all sat there silently pondering his statement. I thought of how in a couple months I would be leaving here, traveling thousands of miles away and decades ahead, to a place where freedom and comfort are so constant they are seldom acknowledged. These soldiers and the people they protect will remain here. For them this fight will last many more years. They will all make many more sacrifices. Their faces, their personalities, their stories and their families will stay with me forever."