All Combat Vets

[Stockton]

Just curious as to how fellow Soldiers on here feel about the losses we've experienced during battle ops?

I catch a lot of comments here and there such as...wasted lives....died in vein...died without a cause...unnecessary death etc etc.

Before I ask your perspective as Combat Vets, both old and new, I should give mine.

Its always been about the man standing next to me. (Took me a while in the beginning to grasp that as a private. I definitely instill that into my IET/BCT trainees). Politics have never been in my battle drills or ranks. So i have never felt that any of the men who lost their lives was for anything less than each other.

Mac

[The Director]

Not a combat vet (or even a vet), but still eagerly awaiting responses to this. Good questions.

[haiedras]

It sucks, period. Part of the challenge is ensuring that there's an adequate grieving process when appropriate.

I appreciate the concern that outsiders may have regarding wasted value, etc. But at the end of the day, we all volunteered for service, and we should understand that sacrifice, while possibly remote, is a very real result.

I agree with Mac that we've always attempted to associate the sacrifice of our brothers/sisters to the greater group good.

[Capt_Communist]

John 15:13

[Rhythm of Life]

John 15:13

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

Amen.

[Noonanda]

From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother

[Dekker]

Lo, there do I see my Father...
Lo, there do I see my Mother and my Sisters and my Brothers...
Lo, there do I see the line of my people back to the beginning...
Lo, they do call to me...
They bid me take my place among them...
In the halls of Valhalla, where the brave may live forever!

[chris]

From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother

very well said.

the bond servicemembers make while in Combat are like no other. for you are like family. you have shed blood, sweat and tears for eachother and would do the same no matter where or what. no matter how long apart you are from eachother we are like brothers for life.

this is a bond that most people cannot understand. it trancends branches too, and wartimes also. any Vet that you encounter is in a sense is your brother.

[C.W.M.V.]

No point in trying to explain it, ice tried but its just one of those things that can't be explained

[bodger]

I saw on the news last night that we've lost 20 American soldiers in Afghanistan alone since Saturday.

I served in southeast Asia 1971-73. This is starting to remind me of that war.

20 families right now are in unimaginable grief.
And do we have a clear cut mission?
Can we see what we are gaining for these sacrifices?
Are we making a difference?


I remember 30 April 1975. Peace with honor my azz.

Maybe if that inevitable outcome had been seen sooner, the wall in Washington would be about 100 feet shorter.

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-casualties-20100902,0,5995710.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fnews+%28L.A.+Times+-+Top+News%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo+SBC+co-brand

Bill and Beverly Osborn still can't bring themselves to erase the phone message from their son Ben. He had called from Afghanistan in June to assure them that he was safe. Four days later, he was killed in a Taliban ambush.

The Osborns long ago accepted the risks faced by their son, an Army specialist. But what they can't accept now are the military rules of engagement, which they contend made it possible for the Taliban to kill him.

On June 27, the Osborns wrote an impassioned e-mail to Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan. They described how Ben, 27, volunteered to man the machine gun on an armored vehicle headed out on a patrol in Kunar province on June 15.

Their son's unit of 20 men was ambushed by a Taliban force of 70 to 100 fighters, the e-mail said. According to the Osborns, who said they talked with members of their son's unit, Ben had to wait to return fire until ordered to do so. He got off 10 rounds before he was shot and killed, they said.

The rules of engagement "led to the demise of our son … and other warriors like him," the e-mail said. The Osborns asked Petraeus to revise the rules and lift restrictions.

"Winning the hearts and minds of the Afghans is not what's best for America," they wrote. "We are at war. The rules of engagement must be to empower our soldiers, not to give aid and comfort to the enemy."

[chris]

the ROE has not been to the advantage of the US soldiers. individual commands also add to the complications to the ROE also.

[dustoff31]

[Stockton]

For those who have posted I can gather the mindset when it comes to combat is shared equally.

So have you encountered the same comments as I mentioned above and what was your responses?

[dustoff31]

I catch a lot of comments here and there such as...wasted lives....died in vein...died without a cause...unnecessary death etc etc.

When I hear such things, if I'm interested in talking to the person at all, and quite often I'm not. I tell them that no soldier ever died for nothing. But it may be fair to ask if the reason he was there was worth his life. Because if it wasn't, that is their fault.

[bodger]

For those who have posted I can gather the mindset when it comes to combat is shared equally.

So have you encountered the same comments as I mentioned above and what was your responses?

Yes I have encountered these types of comments.


I volunteered for duty in Southeast Asia, and was not a draftee. To this day, I still encounter people who ask me how I could have done that, supporting a war that was so wrong and misguided.
I always tell them it wasn't the war I was supporting. I was participating in a tradition of serving in the United States armed forces. If Americans stop doing that, our freedom will be in jeopardy.

So no matter how much someone may disagree with the war in Iraq or Afghanistan, it is ludicrous for them to infer that our battle casualties died in vain.