MLFerrell

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Wed Sep-12-07 08:54 AM
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I dedicate this *1000th* post to my brother, SGT RYAN FERRELL, who is currently in Iraq.

As I write this, the day after the sixth anniversary of the “day that changed everything”, my brother, Ryan, is somewhere in Iraq.

I haven’t heard from him for over a month, though I just *finally* got his address this morning. Not a moment passes without a thought of him, where he is, what he’s doing, how things are (as if I can’t imagine…) and a million other things that I wish I could ask him or tell him.

All day, every day, I wonder if he’s safe. I wonder if he’s alive…

Ryan plans to get married when he comes home… His fiancée is a wonderful young lady. Here they are together:

When I wake up in my somewhat air-conditioned apartment I wonder how hot it must be in the Iraqi desert during late summer.

When I take a shower and shave in the morning, I wonder how long it’s been since he has had the luxury of either.

When I set off for classes in the morning, I wonder if he’s setting off on an IED patrol.

And so my life goes. Every day is surreal, at least when I think about the hell that that foolhardy, brave, honorable son-of-a-bitch volunteered to plunge headfirst back into. And I always think about it…

Here he is sitting on the banks of the Euphrates during his first tour. His unit was on the front line of the invasion. They fought the Republican Guard while building a pontoon bridge across the river to get into Baghdad.

My mother sent me some clothes that I had left at her place. In the package were some boxes of candy cigarettes, with a note. I wonder what she sends Ryan. Knowing him, Wild Bill’s beef jerky, Dinty Moore beef stew, and Pasta Anytime.

Those are some of the things that he wanted the first time. I don’t even know if they still make Pasta Anytime.

I study history, professionally. This semester, I’m studying modern France. Right now, I’m reviewing the First World War.

War doesn’t sound so bad from a classroom a century and a continent away from where you sit.

But that was a long time ago, and far away.

But what of today?

What of the unmitigated horror that is right now, today, far from our shores, yet close to all of us?

My sister just found out that she’s pregnant. Ryan doesn’t know yet. I wonder how he’s going to feel about being an uncle…

The hell on Earth wrought upon Iraq in the name of the United States of America is just as remote as the First World War, to most people.

But not to those who are there, in the thick of things. And not to me.

When Ryan was young, he used to like to play with G.I. Joes. And I was the one who rained on his parade, and told him how G.I. Joe wasn’t anything like the real Army. He never listened… But he always had that peculiar gleam in his eye.

As we grew up, that gleam never dimmed. He enlisted at 17, and was fairly bursting with pride. Deserved pride, then.

I have always wondered, even if one is blind to the past, as so many obviously are, how can anyone say that they are blind to the present?

One may deny the unfathomable carnage of the past, foolishly so, but permissibly. But what about those who refuse to acknowledge the grim realities of the here-and-now?

I remember when Ryan was 15, he wanted to go out drinking with my friends and I. We gave him a couple of beers, but forgot to mention that the gallon of OJ wasn’t straight OJ… I think he still won’t drink a Screwdriver to this day.

The merciless bloodshed will continue unabated until the United States has removed its forces from the Iraqi soil. Gone. Period. Oh, I’ll concede that the violence will probably continue even after we leave, but Iraq will never be at peace as long as an occupying army continues to fundamentally violate its dignity.

Iraq was, for want of a more precise term, Humpty-Dumpty. It was a nation that was cobbled together from pieces of the Ottoman Empire. Once it broke, it became nigh-on impossible to fix it. Anyone with a modicum of education, experience, and intellect could have predicted this disaster.

And a disaster is just what it is, was, and shall be for the foreseeable future.

I remember when my brother and I were very young a Japanese company bought out our local steel mill. We decided, in our youthful innocence, to leave messages for the Japanese kids that everyone assured us would soon be moving into our town.

They never came. But we used to stare at our cryptic pseudo-Japanese, and wonder when they’d finally show up.

John Kerry once asked, under the aegis of youth, a youth rent by the terrible reality of war,

“How do you ask a man do be the last to die for a mistake?”

His question is pertinent, as it always will be. But in this case, there is another layer of complexity, of duplicity…

Why should a man (or woman) be the last to die for not a mistake, but a lie?

My brother chose his path carefully. He is a young man who has everything going for him… A beautiful fiancée, a good job, many friends, a sense of true community… And yet he chose to fulfill, as he saw it, his duty to his brothers in arms. He left this beautiful, kind, wonderful young woman behind…

In another post that I wrote some time ago, I described his rationale, as he explained it to me,

“I’ve been there, and seen terrible things. If I go back, maybe some 18 or 19 year old kid won’t have to in the first place.”

Is that courage? I don’t know. Is that honor? As I understand it, it is. Is that foolish? Perhaps… But regardless, he essentially volunteered to go back. His enlistment was up in December, yet he re-upped in January, knowing full well what was in store.

He didn’t go back because he believes in Bush, or because he wants to “fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here”, or because he wants to “spread freedom and democracy”.

He went back because he wanted to try and help to save the lives of his fellow American soldiers

Ryan joked about wanting to take this AK home with him because, “You could bury the fucker in sand for a year, and fire off a whole clip, no problem.”

I do know this… My brother, Sgt. Ryan Ferrell, is a devoted American. He is a man who would gladly give his life so that another might live. He is a man who would sacrifice himself for the greater good. He is a man who is truly duty-bound as he sees it, to be there with his comrades in arms.

And for his service and sacrifice, his love, his compassion, his sense of humor, his sense of justice, his love for his nation and its people…

I, his brother, salute him.

Yol Bolsun, Ryan. May there be a road. I love you, I miss you. We ALL do.

Come home to us. Come home to your family… Come home in one piece, and soon.

I dedicate this *1000th* post to my brother, SGT RYAN FERRELL, who is currently in Iraq.

Wake up, America!:kick:

**I dedicate this 1000th post to my brother, SGT RYAN FERRELL, who is currently in Iraq.**