Two tales of soldiers and bus tickets
The following story caught my eye this morning while Mr. Hooah! and I were sipping coffee and watching the local news. I was very blessed to read about this “Good Samaritan’s” kindness and mercy he showed to deploying soldiers and their families.
Crowd gathers for 201st benefit at park
Excerpt
By TIM PRESTON - The Independent
Many in the small crowd at Ashland’s Central Park bandstand looked around and wondered “Where is everybody?” as they enjoyed one more chance to be with family and friends heading to Afghanistan with the 201st Engineer Battalion.
While the crowd wasn’t large, it was friendly and appreciative. Bill Baird, a Florida business owner who wrote a $49,000 check that made the day possible, was the focus of much of that appreciation.
“Go on. Give him a big hug,” Paige Fugate told her six-year-old niece Caden Ronnebaum as the little girl waited for a chance to squeeze Baird around the neck for helping bring her daddy, David Perry, and her uncle, Daniel Fugate, home for a few days before they deploy overseas.
Fugate said it is difficult to let Baird know what his generosity means to families of 201st soldiers.
“It felt so great to know somebody is that good,” she said. “We just wanted to thank him for what he did.”
“I’m just glad to be able to make this donation. I just thought it thought would have been shameful for these guys to not get to come home for this six days,” said Baird, owner of Saturn Machine & Welding, as people passing by said “Thank You,” or paused to have their photo taken with him.
“God bless them all and bring them home safely,” he said.
Baird, a Kentuckian who now lives in Florida and often works with AK Steel in Ashland, decided to get involved financially after catching “a glimpse” of a story on CNN about the local soldiers. To pay for bus tickets to get everyone in the 201st home again before they leave for Afghanistan, he added his $49,000 to $11,000 already received from the United Way of Northeast Kentucky.
The local soldiers also got the unexpected leave with thanks to $1,000 donations from both AMVETS Post 95 and Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1168. Army officials also notified them the four day leave had been extended to six days.
LINK to entire article
Now, let me share a story of soldiers who sold their boots to buy bus tickets home. I found the following article from the LA Times that was published on April 10. It’s one Iraqi’s memory of the fall of Baghdad, and the memory of watching soldiers flee Saddam’s Army to either join with the Americans or go home. His memories of that day are very telling, and very interesting to read. There is a link to the entire article at the bottom of the excerpt. I encourage you to read the whole thing.
Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times;(Marine Lance Cpl. Shawn Hicks gets a kiss from a man in Baghdad’s Firdos Square on April 9, 2003, as Iraqis celebrate the arrival of U.S. troops in the city and the end of Saddam Hussein’s regime.
By a Times Staff Writer
April 10, 2008Two weeks before the start of the war, I was called up for military service. I went AWOL. This was a very dangerous decision. If I had been caught, a firing squad would have executed me in public.
I stayed with my mother, sister and brother in our house near Hussein’s presidential complex, the area now known as the Green Zone. When fighting erupted nearby, our mother decided we should go to a safer place in northern Baghdad’s Adhamiya neighborhood. Relatives there welcomed us.
They talked about how Iraqi forces and Hussein were defending Baghdad. But I knew it was a lie. Iraqi soldiers had been selling their boots so they could buy bus tickets home.
We kept track of the war by watching Al Alam, the Arabic-language Iranian station that was the only non-Iraqi television available without an illegal satellite dish.
On April 9, my mother asked me to come watch TV with our relatives. My cousin’s mother was crying at the sight of U.S. tanks in Firdos Square, where the statue had been, and of Iraqis dancing with American troops.
“Those are traitors. They are kissing the enemy,” she sobbed.
I was so happy I could barely hide my feelings. My mother shushed me.
Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore.
I started clapping and shouted, “Yeah Saddam, go to hell!!!”
<snip>My happiness collapsed as Iraqis began looting government offices, ministries, houses and power plants and destroying official records.
I realized that the damage Hussein had done was not only financial and physical, but also psychological.
He had sent the Iraqi people into war after war.
The most educated families had fled, leaving a cultural vacuum and a country of bitter, angry people.
These are not losses that could be repaired with U.S. money or international aid. This damage needs generations to heal.
An Iraqi employee of The Times whose name is being withheld for his safety
There’s an old tradition in our family, taught to me as a small boy by my father, WW2 Army Tech Sgt.
We were in a diner somewhere in metro New Jersey, back from visiting my gramma. At the counter sat a lone PFC, we were in a booth further down the line. The waitress presented us with the bill, and my father said to the waitress, “Will this cover the soldiers tab?” and handed her a five dollar bill.
She smiled, said yes, and we paid and left.
I asked him why he paid for the man’s meal, and he replied that when he was traveling stateside during his service, kind strangers did likewise and he was returning the favor.
Today, in similiar situations, it’s my privilege, duty, and pleasure to do the same.
I recall a burger in a bus station in San Fran that was on the cuff for me when I left. I think it was the uniform policeman that left right in front of me. In either case, it’s a memory that I treasure.
And a tradtion I’ve passed along to my sons.