A Brief Visit From My Soldier Son - by Charles Rush, NYT

[pinto]

This is really a well-written and touching piece, revolving around a son's two week leave from deployment in Afghanistan to come home, get married and go back. Originally published in the NYT 11/6, it ran in our local paper this morning. ~ pinto

A Brief Visit From My Soldier Son Sign in to Recommend
By CHARLES RUSH

Published: November 6, 2009

SEVERAL years ago, as Labor Day approached and parents nationwide began that end-of-summer ritual I know all too well — packing the children off to college — I found myself facing a new and particularly fraught task: preparing to return my son not to college but to war, to the mountain passes northeast of Kandahar, Afghanistan, near the border with Pakistan.

Instead of going to Staples to compare the features of the latest line of laptops or to pick out an alarm clock as I had done with our older children, I went shopping with Ian in the hunting section of Ray’s Sporting Goods, where we bought every last can of sandstone and olive green spray paint to camouflage his gear.

I am a minister in an affluent suburb of New York City. Nothing in my life had led me to expect that Veteran’s Day would honor the military service of a child of mine. But on Sept. 11, 2001, a morning when we lost many friends and neighbors, Ian left high school and drove to the top of the parking lot at Overlook Hospital in Summit, where he watched the second tower of the World Trade Center come down.

A varsity lacrosse player, he decided in the ensuing months that instead of following the path of his siblings and peers, he would enlist in the Army, the only senior at Summit High School to do so. Eventually he would become an Army scout with the 25th Infantry, doing reconnaissance work in the hunt for Al Qaeda militants.

<more at>

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/fashion/08love.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Charles%20Rush&st=cse

[barbtries]

1. touching

they all should come home alive.

damn these wars! :cry:

[A-Long-Little-Doggie]

2. This will be me with my Army son in a couple of years.

I truly do not know how I am going to survive. My one big hope is that President Obama will get all of the troops home.

[rasputin1952]

3. These men and women have earned our respect time and again...

It is beyond the time to bring them home, to raise families and be with family and friends.

May they, and all of our bothers and sisters remain safe...until we can get them home, and I hope that is very soon...:patriot: