Thursday, June 16, 2005

Posthumous Problem for Recruiters

Saddly, more Marines get rubbed out in the Iraq folly. Recuitors are having a hard time getting kids to enlist.

Slice 1:
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A roadside bomb attack killed five U.S. Marines, and gunfire killed an American sailor in a western Iraqi town, the U.S. military said Thursday.
Slice 2:
What I was not able to find in the handbook was anything remotely like the startlingly frank comments of a sergeant at Fort Benning, Ga., who was quoted in the May 30 issue of The Army Times. He was addressing troops in the seventhweek of basic training, and the paper reported the scene as follows:

"'Does anybody know what posthumous means?' Staff Sgt. Andre Allen asked the 150 infantrymen-in-training, members of F Company, 1st Battalion, 19th Infantry Regiment.

"A few hands went up, but he answered his own question." 'It means after death.

Some of you are going to get medals that way,' he said matter-of-factly, underscoring the possibility that some of them would be sent to combat and not return."

10:31 update - another news clip fills us in that six more GI's will be coming home in a flag covered box. How many more GIs must die before it is one too many?

No comments: