thedrifter
05-02-06, 08:07 AM
Elmer Smith | On VI Day, recalling those who don't feel so victorious
Philadelphia Daily News
I CELEBRATED the third anniversary of VI Day by reading a book.
It was a good way to remember the people whom George Bush deployed to make the Middle East safe for democracy and from itself.
The book, "In Conflict," was written by former Daily News staffer Yvonne Latty.
Latty's book profiles some of the people who weren't able to attend that Victory in Iraq celebration on the decks of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln.
It was May 1, 2003. That day, a grateful nation watched its president "co-pilot" a Navy S-3B Viking to a perfect tailhook landing on the Abraham Lincoln's flight deck.
(The grateful nation, incidentally, was the United States. The shellshocked citizens of Iraq still don't understand what we've done for them.)
Real pilots applauded wildly as the president stepped from the cockpit, doffed his helmet and swept back his hair for one of the all-time great photo-ops in the history of political theater.
Then he made the announcement.
Major Conflict is over, he told cheering sailors and Marines and millions of us who crowded around our TV sets as if we were witnessing history.
Gerald Dupris wasn't there that day, and he didn't have time to watch the ceremony on television.
Dupris, who grew up on a Cheyenne reservation in Eagle Butte, S.D., was billeted with his MP unit in an Iraqi desert outpost.
"The president told the nation that the war was over, that the fighting would cease," Dupris told Latty. "But it never stopped. We always knew it was far from over.
"We still had land mines and RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades], firefights and patrols. We had many things to deal with."
His is one of the two dozen soldiers' stories Latty has compiled in this, her second paean to the men and women who still have "many things to deal with," a full three years after their commander in chief declared VI Day.
"In Conflict" makes no political statements, takes no position on this or any other war. What it does is give us an unflinching glimpse of the reality of war as seen by the thousands of young men and women who participate.
Their stories aren't as spectacular as a tailhook landing on an aircraft carrier or as decisive as a declaration of victory by the president of the United States. But reading them breaks what former U.S. Sen. Max Cleland, in his foreword to "In Conflict," calls the "eerie detachment" that separates most of us from the bitter realities of foreign war.
"We see their experiences through the prism of the media babble and the political tug-of-war which their deployment ultimately brings," Cleland said.
"For the first time, we feel what they feel - the fear, the terror, the confusion, the doubt, the anger and the frustration of being caught up in something much bigger than them."
There is anger and frustration. But it is mostly the unadorned stories of combat solidiers told in a tone remarkably free of rancor.
Jermel Daniels, a Marine corporal from New York, opens his narrative this way: "I lost my leg because of an IED [improvised explosive device], a homemade bomb," he told Latty, "and it sucks to be like this."
Herold Noel, an Army PFC from the Bronx, recalls seeing a woman get shot in the head "by mistake" and drop her baby in the road.
"It wasn't my fault. I didn't mean to hit her in the head. Then the baby was lying there."
Before he could react to pick it up, a truck ran over the baby, decapitating it.
"I always tell people I left my soul back in Iraq," he said. "Sometimes I fall asleep crying. I'm like, 'Damn, for what?' "
Send e-mail to smithel@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2512. For recent columns: go.philly.com/smith
Elmer Smith hosts "The Exchange" on WHAT (1340-AM) from 1 to 5 p.m. daily.
Ellie
Philadelphia Daily News
I CELEBRATED the third anniversary of VI Day by reading a book.
It was a good way to remember the people whom George Bush deployed to make the Middle East safe for democracy and from itself.
The book, "In Conflict," was written by former Daily News staffer Yvonne Latty.
Latty's book profiles some of the people who weren't able to attend that Victory in Iraq celebration on the decks of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln.
It was May 1, 2003. That day, a grateful nation watched its president "co-pilot" a Navy S-3B Viking to a perfect tailhook landing on the Abraham Lincoln's flight deck.
(The grateful nation, incidentally, was the United States. The shellshocked citizens of Iraq still don't understand what we've done for them.)
Real pilots applauded wildly as the president stepped from the cockpit, doffed his helmet and swept back his hair for one of the all-time great photo-ops in the history of political theater.
Then he made the announcement.
Major Conflict is over, he told cheering sailors and Marines and millions of us who crowded around our TV sets as if we were witnessing history.
Gerald Dupris wasn't there that day, and he didn't have time to watch the ceremony on television.
Dupris, who grew up on a Cheyenne reservation in Eagle Butte, S.D., was billeted with his MP unit in an Iraqi desert outpost.
"The president told the nation that the war was over, that the fighting would cease," Dupris told Latty. "But it never stopped. We always knew it was far from over.
"We still had land mines and RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades], firefights and patrols. We had many things to deal with."
His is one of the two dozen soldiers' stories Latty has compiled in this, her second paean to the men and women who still have "many things to deal with," a full three years after their commander in chief declared VI Day.
"In Conflict" makes no political statements, takes no position on this or any other war. What it does is give us an unflinching glimpse of the reality of war as seen by the thousands of young men and women who participate.
Their stories aren't as spectacular as a tailhook landing on an aircraft carrier or as decisive as a declaration of victory by the president of the United States. But reading them breaks what former U.S. Sen. Max Cleland, in his foreword to "In Conflict," calls the "eerie detachment" that separates most of us from the bitter realities of foreign war.
"We see their experiences through the prism of the media babble and the political tug-of-war which their deployment ultimately brings," Cleland said.
"For the first time, we feel what they feel - the fear, the terror, the confusion, the doubt, the anger and the frustration of being caught up in something much bigger than them."
There is anger and frustration. But it is mostly the unadorned stories of combat solidiers told in a tone remarkably free of rancor.
Jermel Daniels, a Marine corporal from New York, opens his narrative this way: "I lost my leg because of an IED [improvised explosive device], a homemade bomb," he told Latty, "and it sucks to be like this."
Herold Noel, an Army PFC from the Bronx, recalls seeing a woman get shot in the head "by mistake" and drop her baby in the road.
"It wasn't my fault. I didn't mean to hit her in the head. Then the baby was lying there."
Before he could react to pick it up, a truck ran over the baby, decapitating it.
"I always tell people I left my soul back in Iraq," he said. "Sometimes I fall asleep crying. I'm like, 'Damn, for what?' "
Send e-mail to smithel@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2512. For recent columns: go.philly.com/smith
Elmer Smith hosts "The Exchange" on WHAT (1340-AM) from 1 to 5 p.m. daily.
Ellie