NYT:TV Glimpses of Captured GI Encourage Ohio Hometown

[DeepModem Mom]

PRISONER
TV Glimpses of Captive G.I. Encourage His Ohio Hometown
By SABRINA TAVERNISE

Published: April 17, 2004


When images of Pfc. Keith Matthew Maupin (age 20), an American soldier recently captured in Iraq, streamed onto television screens in his hometown in southwest Ohio, his family members were overjoyed.

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"My name is Keith Matthew Maupin. I am a soldier from the First Division," he said, looking into the camera. Saying that he was married with a 10-month-old son, he said he had come to liberate Iraq but had not come willingly because he had wanted to stay with his child....

***

Private Maupin's family had not wanted him to join the military as his father and three uncles had years before. All four were marines, and most of them served in Vietnam. The soldier's family wanted him to go to college, said his uncle, Stephan Maupin.

Mr. Maupin, speaking from his home in La Grange, Ky., said his nephew had been a good student who played football and held a job at his mother's insistence. Mr. Maupin said he did not recall his nephew being afraid about the dangers of serving in Iraq. "He's 20 years old," he said. "He thinks he's going to live forever. He realizes death is a real thing but I'm sure in his mind, he didn't think it was going to happen to him."...


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/17/national/17MAUP.html

[Mari333]

1. Its pretty sad when a family is glad their son is alive

and in the hands of kidnappers, rather then dead on the battlefield, or not knowing where he is. Thats what the military has put families through.
One mother I know of watched the fighting in Fallujah, and was so worried and concerned for her son, she called Iraq, got thru to the commandant, and demanded to know if her son was okay.
That night, the officer in charge of her sons unit humiliated her son in front of the unit because his mom called , worried about him. The son was harassed by the unit.
Another mother watched the army take her only son back to Iraq, a kid filled with shrapnel wounds from the first stint, and they forced him to sign the papers to return and threw him on the plane, telling him to "buck up" and be a man and get back to Iraq, despite his PTSD and wounds. They didnt even let his mother and father know when they took him back, and when she calls her son in Iraq now, all he is allowed to say is "Im where Im supposed to be."
The soldiers there, many of them, are caught in the hell of pressured force to stay there, and be sent back. They have no out.
The horror stories like this are why the military reserves and guard are doomed.
http://www.bringthemhomenow.com

[DeepModem Mom]

2. Watching the tape of that 20-year-old kid is heartbreaking --

I cannot imagine what his mother is going through.