At some point in the future, soldiers will pack up their rucks, equipment will be loaded into huge shipping containers, C-130s will rise wheels-up off the tarmac, and Navy transport ships will cross the high seas to return home once again. At some point ”” the timing of which I don’t have the slightest guess at ”” the war in Iraq will end. And I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately ”” I’ve been thinking about the last American soldier to die in Iraq.
Tonight, at 3 a.m., a hunter’s moon shines down into the misty ravines of Vermont’s Green Mountains. I’m standing out on the back deck of a friend’s house, listening to the quiet of the woods. At the Fairbanks Museum in nearby St. Johnsbury, the lights have been turned off for hours and all is dark inside the glass display cases, filled with Civil War memorabilia. The checkerboard of Jefferson Davis. Smoothbore rifles. Canteens. Reading glasses. Letters written home.
Four or five miles outside of town, past a long stretch of water where the moon is crossing over, a blue and white house sits in a small clearing not far from where I stand now. Chimney smoke rises from a fire burned down to embers. A couple spoon each other in sleep, exhausted from lovemaking. One of them is beginning to snore. I want them to wake up and make love again, even if they need the sleep and tomorrow’s workday holds more work than they might imagine.
Can Christians – Christian Americans, even – be properly sentimental about “Whitman’s America”?
Two broad possibilities:
a) the last soldier or marine to die in Iraq will be killed by IDF [mortars, etc] in the course of late-stage evacuation, along about March 2011 following a Democrat cut-off of funding, or
b) the last soldier or marine to die in Iraq will be killed in a road accident sometime after 2040 — after all, we still have troops dying in Germany and Japan after 62 years, in Korea after 54 years, and in ‘Yugoslavia’ after 10 years.
Only a soldier could have written this.
What was the purpose of this piece?
“smoothbore rifle” is an oxymoron. (A trifle, I know)