Arlington
My buddy Sig on a recent visit to Arlington and encountering a friend there:
I stumbled onto the headstone of Sgt. 1st Class Wilbert Davis, who I last saw alive on the evening in the last hours before the Battle of Karbala Gap. This was in early April. Davis was in the driver’s seat of a Humvee, and it seemed to me that he was fast asleep as I talked with journalist Michael Kelly and Senior Airman Dan Housley.
The sun had just set and darkness quickly fell over the desert. A long line of armored vehicles stretched past the horizon.
Our future was uncertain.
I had gotten used to living in the moment. There was no point in thinking too far ahead because, frankly, there was no guarantee that anyone would be alive in the next hour.
…
The great combat correspondent Ernie Pyle had written about losing friends in his war, and I was certain it would happen in mine.
Death came much closer than I had imagined, though. Two journalists on the bus that took Express-News photographer Bahram Mark Sobhani and I to the assembly area in the northern Kuwaiti desert died in Gulf War II.
One was Mike Kelly. The other was NBC’s David Bloom.
On Sunday, I stared down at Wilbert Davis’ final resting place and it all came back again.
Sig’s whole thing here.
I didn’t know Davis, though I know some of the other people and things Sig is talking about. My own recollections of Kelly and Bloom here, here and here.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 1:11 am on Monday, October 22, 2007
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October 22nd, 2007 at 6:28 am
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