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paid my taxes I freely admit that with my sister in Iraq I pay more attention to what is happening over there than I would otherwise. War by proxy has become more personal and I feel the need to be more involved than I was at the beginning. So when I saw that there was an article in a recent issue of The New Yorker about an American soldier who had just returned home from Iraq, I had to read it to hear what he had to say about the experience. Maybe in an attempt to make the story representative of middle America, the soldier that the magazine chose to follow was from a small town in Wisconsin. Whatever their reasons for choosing him might have been, it did make the article more personal to me. I knew the name of the town where he lived and could relate to his life story prior to his enlisting in the Army. His story was not fiction to me. Overall I'd have to say that his story was a positive one despite losing part of his right leg by driving over a land mine. As to how a person can still be positive after such an experience is beyond me. I have no idea how I would react if something that awful happened to me. His family and fiance are there to support him and he seems happy enough. There was no regret on his part for what he had done, but at the end of the article he wasn't sure what to do next with his life. All that was certain was that he was going to be a father. For him life does continue to move forward after war even though he was visibly changed by the experience. My sister told me that what she wants to do once she gets home is go back to Australia and spend some time with the friends that she made there when we visited the country three years ago. To me that sounds like a good idea. |