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By Meriwether Ball, Editor, CorpsStories.com 11/24/2003 Yesterday was not a good news day for this military news editor. And the conclusion arrived: Donald Rumsfeld, please take a new strategy. Now. The Virginian Pilot yesterday delivered an in-depth look at the military mortuary at Dover AFB. We all know that our fallen land on US soil there first, before being sent home. Arriving to individual services on the tarmac and departing in full dress uniforms past a parade delivering the solemn slow-salute, the corpses of our young service men and women travail. I would never assume to know better than the honorable, and I say that sincerely, Mr. Rumsfeld. So maybe it is that I am pleading more than demanding. However, this present circumstance - of ambushed, then dead, soldiers, had gone from horrible to horrific, in one single day. It wasn’t just the Pilot story. It was that combined with a CNN story detailing the desecration of the bodies of two killed soldiers, and my own experience. How does such a brilliant strategy expert as Mr. Rumsfeld allow our military to be playing the same heinous games with Iraqi insurgents that Israel plays with Hamas? When is he going to invoke an innovative and absolute and timely effort, as he has so effectively performed in the past? Not when we’re lined up on Syria or Iran. Not when the Iraqi’s have an acceptable government. Now, right now. From whence do I speak? From getting my hands filthy, stinking dirty, handling the dead sent home. Those beloved dead; and those left for dead. I deeply love my Marines. Not them personally, but their heart and their fight and their humility. When I began publishing the hometown news story of each of their obituaries, I realized I was in deeper as a journalist, than I ever wanted to be. There were nights when I couldn’t find their newspaper. Or the story was too brief, and those were the nights when I knew the hurt was going to be drawn out. I’d send a search engine out looking for something that was going to go off like a grenade in my heart: How his wife felt. What his mother was doing when the phone rang. What that Marine was going to do with the rest of his life. And there were times when I couldn’t take it anymore, flip my computer off and cry until my lungs hurt. But I couldn’t bring myself to abandon this commitment I made to myself, to publish each and every one. Almost. “Hospitalman Joshua McIntosh, 22, of Kingman, Ariz., died 26 June in Karbala, Iraq, from a non-hostile gunshot wound.” Reported DefenseLink.mil – on October 3, 2003. Not one newspaper has published his story. When confronted, local editors don’t respond. I can’t even find a picture of him. And if I lived in Kingman, I’d do the story myself. Today, two soldiers were killed and more than that, there wasn’t enough support to secure their corpses before they were sliced and stripped. So Mr. Rumsfeld,
please, please, shock and awe us again, now. Meriwether
Ball is Editor-In-Chief of Corpsstories.com, and assistant editor
to Johnny P News. She is an accomplished journalist whose work has
appeared in the Worcester Telegram, Brunswick Times Record, and others.
To contact the author, click here. © 2003 Johnny P News
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