We Were Soldiers Once . . . And Young

I sat at home this afternoon and watched a movie I had seen before. Actually the other day Jenny and I were at Best buy and I decided to buy this movie. When I picked it up on the bottom of the shelf I remembered what this movie was all about, and so too did Jenny. As we walked to the counter to buy it Jen told me how every time she saw this it made her cry, what I didn't tell her is that it did for me too.

The movie,"We were Soldiers" is about a cavalry unit in the Vietnam War, and the battle they fought. As the movie goes on you can feel the emotions of the soldiers the movie spotlights, as well as the family members, the wife's, that watch their loved ones go to war. The colonel promises he wont leave anyone behind, not living or the dead. It shows a soldier keeping the Colonels promise as he pulls his fallen comrade to security of the LZ, however, is killed doing this mission.

I guess the reason I'm telling you about this movie today, and not about my marathon training, is because I truly feel as though this current war and any of the other wars, has torn so many lives apart. As you sit and watch this movie you are taken on that journey with these families, and you truly feel the way they feel. The anguish of saying goodbye, to the heart pounding fears of having the telegram delivered to your home. It is not the politicians or the media that they show, for it is not those people that have the pain. It is the Soldiers, the Marines, the Airmen, and the Sailors who watch their brothers in arms fall. It is the families of these brave young and old souls that will never be the same as they are told their son or daughter wont be coming home.

The end of the movie shows the Colonel returning home to his wife, who thought it was the telegram that would change her life. It also shows two soldiers walking through an airport, not to a parade or hundreds of people celebrating their return, but to only themselves. The narrator tells us that in the end it is not the flag, or the country that the soldiers fight for, but it is the soldier next to him that he fights for.

In conclusion I'd like to leave you with a quote that Lt. Colonel Laura Richardson said at the memorial for my fallen friends. These men died when the helicopter they were flying in was shot down over Tikrit, Iraq on November 7, 2003. "In the deadly chaos of battle, soldiers hold trust and when they fight, they fight for each other because of the trust that resides in one another."

"Only the dead have seen the end of war" Plato