Sometimes it's the little things that get to you. Take, for example, this report that terrorists have executed murdered an American soldier.
There is, to be honest, no sanity in this latest murder. Putting a bullet through the back of the head of Spc. Keith Maupin won't change the course of events in Iraq one iota, but it till change the world of the people who knew and loved him.
I don't know if Spc. Maupin had a girlfriend, a wife, or any kids, or if he was Protestant or Roman Catholic, or what kind of music he liked. There's a million things I don't know about him.
What I do know is that he was from Batavia, Ohio, less than a half-hour drive from where I live (just south of Hamilton). If you're curious, Batavia is roughly sixteen miles east of Cincinnati; just another small Ohio town.
And that leads me to the one thing that I know about Spc Maupin: I grew up in a small Ohio, town, and I'm living in another right now. We probably would have had a lot in common; the Reds, Schoenling beer, making fun of Kentucky...
This is why, I think, Maupin's murder hit me harder than the others we've read about. While I didn't know the man, I know where he comes from. I'm not ashamed to say that I cried a little when I thought about it; a nice young man from a small Ohio town murdered gangster-style, while he was trying to help those less fortunate than he was.
One of the saddest things about this is that -for most of us- in the not too distant future, Keith will have become another statistic; another data point in the "War on Terror."
We have to remember something, for the sake of Keith, and all the other men and women who have given their lives in Iraq. Bill Mauldin, who wrote Up Front during the Second World War when he was only 21, once said:
When you lose a friend you have an overpowering desire to go back home and yell in everybody's ear, "This guy was killed fighting for you. Don't forget him --ever. Keep him in your mind when you wake up in the morning and when you go to bed at night. Don't think of him as the statistic which changes 38,788 casualties to 38,789. Think of him as a guy who wanted to live every bit as much as you do. Don't let him be just one of "Our Brave Boys" from the old home town, to whom a marble monument is erected in the city park, and a civic-minded lady calls the newspaper ten year later and wants to know why that "unsightly stone" isn't removed.
It's all too easy for most of us to forget all of this, except once a year on Memorial Day. Every one of us has to stop, and remember that the men and women who have given their lives really are our friends and neighbors; that you played football in high school with someone exactly like 1st Sgt. Robert J. Dowdy(Cleveland, Oh) , or you knew a guy like Sgt. Michael D. Acklin II (Louisville, Ky) in your geometry class in high school, or college.
Thanks to Dean for the link.