ABC Nightline Wednesday: Letters and emails from Iraq

[Bozita]

Looking forward to this. Now, here's Nightline's daily email:

 
Nightline Daily E-Mail
November 26, 2003


TONIGHT'S FOCUS: Many say that journalism is the first draft of history. Even more immediate, however, are the letters written from one person to another, recounting with great transparency the events unfolding in one's life. In times of war, these words take on even greater significance. In an age of email and instant messaging, friends, family members, and lovers can converse quickly, easing the minds of those left at home. The words "You've Got Mail," can carry greater weight when the e-mail expected comes from a loved one in Iraq.

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Written correspondence, whether via email or snail mail, evokes a sense of intimacy lacking in our public discourse on the war. Over the past couple of weeks, I've been working with Chris Bury and producer Dan Morris on this broadcast, reading over letters written by soldiers in Iraq. As we momentarily dipped into the lives of some of the soldiers, their correspondence humanized foreign policy as we saw first-hand the implications for their families here at home. These soldiers write about cravings, missing home, RPG attacks, landmine explosions, sandstorms, Iraqi civilians, children, and yes, about politics.

When my parents were my age, my father was a Marine in Vietnam and my mom, his young bride, a schoolteacher in California. In addition to letters, they would send audiocassettes back and forth to each other. Although I've never heard them, my mom tells me they would talk about nothing extraordinary, just the day-to-day events that each was missing. My mom would drive an hour to my dad's parents' house so they, too, could say a few words to their son overseas. But these tapes would take weeks to arrive. Some of our soldiers today have the ability to deliver their words with a click of a mouse.

You may be wondering how we found the letters and e-mails in the first place. We met some of the families through Andrew Carroll, an editor dedicated to collecting and preserving letters written in wartime through his project at warletters.com. Other letters we found published in papers around the country; in these cases, the recipients felt compelled to share the words of their loved ones with a larger audience, and they were kind enough to speak with us about their importance as well.

These letters are sent to inform and to reassure - both the recipient and the author. In one letter that will not appear in tonight's broadcast, a soldier writes before the war on March 12 to his 3-month old daughter, saying, "Remember how I told you about the bad man way far away, who daddy and his friends were going to have to go talk to? Well, I think it is getting time for us to make him stop being bad. I hope we can do it quickly so that I can get home to you and mommy." My guess is that these words served to help the soldier feel better about his mission overseas just as much as they one day will help his daughter understand why her father missed certain "firsts" in her life.

And, the words in certain letters take on an even greater significance. In some cases, the soldiers do not come home. We begin our broadcast with a family in Roy, Utah, where five sisters and a brother of Sgt. James Cawley, who died on March 29 in Iraq, gather to remember him through his letters. Those letters will forever provide them with a reminder of who he was, and the collective writings of soldiers abroad may one day provide some clarity to what is undoubtedly a very confusing time for our nation.

We hope you'll join us.

Courtney King and the Nightline Staff
ABCNEWS Washington bureau

[Bozita]

1. kick for those troops

[Blue_Tires]

2. ttt

chilling