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The exterior of the house where three women who had disappeared as teenagers approximately ten years ago were found alive on May 7 in Cleveland, Ohio. Photo by Pugliano/Getty Images
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The Office’s best Jewish moment
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On an otherwise unremarkable day in 1938, a chubby but charming student at John Burroughs Junior High in Los Angeles “cracked the code of his comic gift and discovered his…
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Survivor: Irene Rosenberg
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The Divine Wedding and Kiss - Parashat Naso
“O for your kiss! For your love / More enticing than wine, / For your scent and sweet name – For all this they love you. Take me away to…
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What would my Israeli grandmother think?
When I hear about the latest events in Israel – the air strikes on weapons facilities in Syria, the flare-ups over women donning prayer shawls at the Western Wall –…
A hot topic, a great panel, and chance to learn and discuss—immigration at issue
It's a critical time for immigration reform in this country. Washington is getting set to make major changes, the likes of which haven't been seen since the 1980's under President…
State 194: A Documentary About Palestine
Opening this weekend at Laemmle’s Music Hall 3 is a very hot-button new documentary called State 194, which follows the recent history of Palestine. Many will approach this film with…
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October 8, 2007 | 8:53 pm
‘Blood and guts - and tender remembrances of home’
Posted by Brad A. Greenberg
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The soldier’s messages back to his wife, Diana, father, stepmother and five siblings alternated between gruesome details of the horror of battle - a dog dragging away a corpse’s head, a body identified only by its shoes because nothing else remained, trucks awash with blood and guts - and tender remembrances of home.
He called Diana frequently and sent her love poems.
“He’d ask me to pray for him and his soldiers,” she said. “He said, `I hope you won’t look at me differently for the things I had to do.’ I told him, `Don’t stop and think, just do what you have to.”’
And sometimes, those things were terrible.
He pulled a comrade from a Stryker whose legs stayed behind in the wrecked armored vehicle. He killed at least eight men. He’d smelled the stink of death before and ducked bullets as an emergency medical technician in Compton, but he was profoundly affected by the war.
These are some of the disturbingly evocative words from Brent Hopkins’ tale of a grieving father who flew to Baghdad to follow in his soldier son’s final steps. It is a searing reminder of what this war is costing us—humans—not just in dollars and lives, but in mental suffering and unwashable memories.
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