Hey guys, had a lot of time sitting around lately as I’ve had a few grad papers to write and haven’t been going out much.
Anyways, I just caught word of one of my friends from friends from grade school and high school just died from an IED over in the box (I’ve also heard vehicle accident and there are conflicting reports). He was a Cpl. in the USMC and a highly motivated individual. He grew up all his life having a pretty rough childhood. (lots of kids picked on him through grade school because he was small, he came from a poor family, etc.)
How I wish I could have been there with ya brother. (I could not join due to a severe hearing loss). I hope you’re in a better place now and you’re watching over all your brothers and sisters serving right now. I know you are and I wish I could have told you one last time thank you for your service.
Also I’d like to extend this thank you to all service members, past, present and future. This is the second friend I have lost, the first was Lance Cpl. Jonathon Collins. RIP guys.
Eternal Father, grant, we pray,
To all Marines, both night and day,
The courage, honor, strength, and skill
Their land to serve, thy law fulfill
Be thou the shield forevermore
From every peril to the Corps.
I know just how you feel brother. I lost my best friend Stan Lapinski (ARMY) to a IED in Irag back in 2004. Say a prayer for him and remember the words of Gen. George s. Patton: should we mourn the loss of these brave men?yes, but thank GOD they ever lived!
“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us–that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion–that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.
Dear Madam,–
I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.
I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.
I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
