THIS IS A DIARY ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED on January 6, 2007, during a time when my primary activity -- outside of tending to my son -- was keeping the human cost of the war in Iraq front and center.
I was pulled back to it today, as I always am on Memorial Day, but this time particularly by OPOL's rec-list diary.
I am an ardent admirer of OPOL, as he himself knows. But I was struck by this:
Some of them are just naive kids caught up in something evil and deadly that they don't begin to understand. That's not to take anything away from those who served or from the real heroes. They do exist...but they're rare.
And for the first time ever, I must disagree with my good friend. For during the time I was publishing diaries on Iraq -- under a former user name -- I came across an untold number of stories of the real heroes, who were by no means rare. Some of them were soldiers, some of them were those who waited at home. But they all were heros, for reasons having very little to do with war.
This is a repeat of the story of some of them...
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me.
The Carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
~Emily Dickinson
IT CAN BE COLD AND WET IN IRAQ in winter. Very wet. Deadly cold. But more of that later. For now, it's important to know the stories of the lives of three young men... Joseph Strong, Jeremiah Johnson, and Logan Tinsley.
JOEY STRONG took 9-11 hard. His dad, his uncle, even his grandfather had all served in the military. And the hijacked airliners fireballing into the twin towers weren't just an attack on our country, it was an attack on his country, which all the men in his family, right hands raised, had sworn to defend. Joey was angry. He had to act.
"He wanted to catch Osama bin Laden all by himself," said his mom. His dad had been Air Force, his uncle Navy, and his grandfather Army, so it probably seemed like a perfect symmetry when he tried to join the Marines at 17. "They came to the house with paperwork," his mother said. But though he begged, she wouldn't sign.
It was another blow for the young man from Boone County, Indiana, named after Daniel Boone, with one township after another so Americanish that they could be straight out of The Music Man, and so red-state that its high school's colors are red, white and blue.
But having no choice, Joey waited , working at his grandfather's steak house after school and in the summer, all the while biding his time. Then, as soon as he could, he joined the army.
Army life suited Joey Strong, everyone said. "He just loved everything about it. I mean he played with army men when he was a kid," said his sister. And being stationed in Alaska -- where he could hunt and fish -- well, that was like a little bit of heaven on earth.
So it was a happy young man the family visited in Anchorage in September. A young man on top of the world. And if he was nervous about being deployed to Iraq the next month, he didn't let it show. And besides, his best friend from Fort Richardson was deploying at the same time.
JEREMIAH JOHNSON wanted to play pro baseball more than anything, almost. He certainly was blessed with natural ability, a star player on the baseball team at Prairie High School, where he earned the defensive player of the year award. Not that that was enough for him: he played two years Ryder Baseball as well.
"JJ", as his team-mates called him, was a marvel in center field, known for his diving catches and rocket-fast returns that kept all players on base. His natural athleticism gave him the ability, but it was his focus that fulfilled the promise. "If you kicked him in the shin, you couldn't get him to say 'ouch,' " said his coach.
And then there was his bravado, never more apparent than in a little league game at age 12. Last at bat in the final inning of a no-hitter, the pitcher gave him a walk to first. JJ stole second. Then third. Then home. His team took the game, one-zero.
So baseball seemed like a natural for Jeremiah Johnson.
But the high school had another program which caught his interest: the Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps, and Jeremiah found another dream. Two dreams, in fact. The first was becoming an Army Special Forces officer. The second was Gale.
Jeremiah and Gale had known each other since they were children, having met at New Hope Center in downtown Vancouver, where both their families attended church. Love blossomed, and soon after graduating, on August 28, 2001, they married. Committed to family life, Jeremiah fulfilled his other, newer dream, enlisting in the army and spending a year in Special Forces training, before deciding that he preferred to become an airborne infantryman, more commonly called a paratrooper.
Along the way, Jeremiah and Gale had two kids: Isaiah, 4, and Rya, 2. And though he was ready to serve in Iraq, it was hard to leave Gale, and especially the kids, behind.
It was some small comfort, however, that he was going with another Fort Richardson paratrooper who had become his best friend: Joey Strong, from Boone County, Indiana.
LOGAN TINSLEY'S full name was Douglas Logan Tinsley, but everybody in his unit called him 'Doc T', for in their eyes the young medic was their doctor, or as good as. They'd seen his bravery in action, from staunching blood and bandaging wounds to cutting open a chest so that he could reinflate a punctured lung -- all the while under fire -- with no regard for his own safety... and you just don't get better doctoring than that.
They'd even seen him on Christmas Eve, when an Iraqi lay shot and dying in the dirt, as Logan knelt beside him and yelled "I can save him!" -- ignoring an officer's cry of "No" -- and as bullets flew, performed field surgery, saving the man's life.
Others called him hero. But to Logan, it was fulfillment of a duty, something to make Master Sgt. Al Boyd proud. Not that he needed to. Boyd had always been proud of Logan Tinsley. Proud and impressed.
"He'd read something then a few minutes later tell me all about it, verbatim," Boyd said. "I told him, 'It's real hard, as a teacher, to keep up with you.'"
But that was one of the qualities which made Logan a great medic. He could remember all the details of his training, even under fire -- a life-saving blessing when the pressure might cause others to forget to check for the exit wound in a soldier's back.
Boyd had been like a second father to Logan, and to Logan's brother Ryan. They met because Boyd was the teacher at the Junior Reserve Officer Training program at Logan's high school. "As soon as he met you, saw you in your uniform, he told me, ‘Mama, I want to join the Army,'", Logan's mother told Boyd.
But there was another part of being a soldier that didn't suit a natural life saver like Logan. Even in medic training it was drummed in that he was there to fight. "One medic on his weapon returning fire can make the difference on whether the enemy stays and continues fire or not," every medic is told. In a firefight, not firing back can mean the death of a comrade, someone Logan was supposed to save. And so Logan fired back, scoring a kill shot. And for the life saver from Chester, South Carolina, it was terrible.
"His e-mail to me broke my heart as he revealed to me had no choice. He says he dreams of his face and death every night but he knows he is a U.S. soldier and that is his mission," said his mother.
But Logan wasn't the only one with dreams of death. His grandmother had a dream just a few weeks before. In it, Logan's dead grandfather -- a Korean war veteran -- was reaching his hand out to 'a soldier in the sand'.
THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS was cold and wet. Just hours after Logan had saved the Iraqi man, the Humvee carrying Joey, Jeremiah and Logan through a driving rain hit a slick and rolled over into a canal, pinning them underneath. As the brackish water filled their lungs, their bodies went into an automatic physiological response to try to save them: their heart rate slowed, blood was redirected from the extremities to the vital organs, and their vocal chords restricted to seal the air tubes. If conscious after the crash, they soon were spared any further awareness as the brain centers began to die from carbon dioxide poisoning, just before cardiac arrest.
Around them, their comrades worked frantically to get at them. Minutes passed. Then minutes more.
Joey Strong died.
Logan Tinsley died.
But after 12 minutes underwater, Jeremiah Johnson's limp, comatose body was pulled free. Jeremiah was flown to a hospital in Germany. His mom, dad, and Gale flew to be there with him. Tests showed only autonomic brain activity, the bare minimum needed to breathe and keep the heart beating. They waited by his side, praying, day after day after day. New Year's came... then the next day, and the next, and the next, with no improvement.
JOEY STRONG HAD LAST TALKED with his mom about two weeks before Christmas. They talked about the usual, everyday things, and Joey promised to call again the day after Christmas. But instead of a call, came a knock on the door.
WHEN LOGAN TINSLEY'S MOM saw the men at the door, she wouldn't let them in. "Don't you come in here and tell me he's dead," she sobbed. But in her heart, she already had expected it. For like Logan and Logan's grandmother, she had been having dreams as well.
In those dreams two uniformed men approached her door to tell her that one of her sons had died. But she didn't know which son, for Logan's brother Ryan is also in the army, stationed at Fort Bragg. But Ryan had been home on leave, and had just gone to buy batteries when the men came. So standing there, wide awake but wishing it were a dream, she finally knew.
And she sent the two men away, refusing to listen to anything else they had to say.
Now she has another worry. Ryan has taken the news of his big brother's death hard. Friends say he's trying to be strong for his mother, but she knows what's lurking underneath. "Now he's all fired up to get over there and avenge his brother," she said. And she doesn't want him to go.
Nor does Al Boyd, framing it as a J-ROTC teacher would: "Vengeance tends to cloud judgment," he says.
But Boyd is taking it hard as well. The loss of the young man he taught for four years, that became like a son to him, is preying on his soul.
"I'm wondering if not for me, where he might have been today," Boyd says, choking up.
TWO DAYS AGO, JEREMIAH JOHNSON'S FATHER spoke to a reporter. "The picture the doctors painted today was pretty bleak," said David Johnson, adding, "In discussions with a neurologist, the implication was that possibly we needed to remove life support now, because if we don't remove it now, we're going to end up in a Terri Schiavo situation."
Yesterday, Jeremiah's mom released a statement:
The past 24 hours have taken us through all ranges of emotion. It is with deep sadness that I write that our dear Jeremiah went to be with the Lord at 1:52pm (German time) (4:52am PST) Friday, January 5, 2007.
When Jeremiah was transported to Germany, the doctors told us that he had suffered massive brain damage. They informed us that it was very likely that his brain function would continue to deteriorate. Last night at around 10pm, that became evident as his blood pressure plummeted. We stayed with him throughout the night into the next morning. Finally, the doctors, through further testing, determined that all brain function had ceased.
You may first think that God did not give us a miracle. But the miracle that has happened is through all the people that Jeremiah's life has touched. Lives will never be the same again. God sees the big picture and we are part of it.
JOEY AND LOGAN WERE BOTH 21. JEREMIAH WAS 23. Their lives were ended long before their final reckoning was due.
And we are part of it.