Wartime Deaths Give Meaning to Each Syllable in What Became

[thedrifter]

In Troops' Final Words, Faith and Grace
Wartime Deaths Give Meaning to Each Syllable in What Became Last Letters Home

By Laura Blumenfeld and Julie Tate
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, April 27, 2003; Page A01


One soldier wrote to his mother: Send more M&Ms. Another scribbled hello to his Nanny and Pop-pop. A Marine asked his girlfriend to tie a yellow ribbon in her hair. A reservist told his sister that if he didn't make it back, please read Rudyard Kipling's "If" at the funeral.

The soldiers didn't know that these messages would be among their last. They dealt mostly with the mundane -- the blood blisters, the tent mice, the sand that crunched between their teeth. They congratulated Dad on his new heifer and praised Sister's cheerleading. But they were young men preparing for battle, awkwardly caught between imagined futures and an abrupt end. And so they made sure to say the things that needed to be said, to thank, to explain, to apologize and, most urgently, to love. They came from diverse backgrounds, yet a common theme runs through their writing. They died believing in their families, in the president or in their God. Rarely bitter and with scant bloodlust, they were men of faith.

"Please don't worry," Tristan Aitken, 31, wrote to his parents. "My life is in God's hands and I am sure I will be safe. Please don't call it naive. I just trust that everything will be fine."

Four weeks later, Aitken, an Army captain, was riding in the lead vehicle in a convoy near Saddam International Airport in Baghdad. He was killed by a round fired from a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher.

Aitken, like many others, was eager for the fighting to begin, not because he wanted to kill, but because he wanted to come home.

"I feel like an attack dog chained to a pole waiting for my masters to cut me loose," he wrote on March 16, days before the war started. "We all know the only way home is through Baghdad, and we are ready."

Ryan Beaupre, 30, a Marine captain, wrote to his parents about a similar desire among his men to do their duty and to get out.

"To be honest, the one thing that worries me is a lot of Iraqi people getting killed," Beaupre wrote in his small, precise print. "Our weapons are powerful and I don't believe the Iraqis will last too long. I hope they simply give up or I fear many of them will die for a dictator that doesn't care one bit about them."

Three days later, Beaupre died in a helicopter crash.

If these men were afraid, they didn't write about it. Their awareness of death translated into an outpouring of love.

"I have spent my whole life wondering if I would meet someone like you," Marine Lance Cpl. Michael Williams, 31, wrote to his fianc?e. "Your love will get me through the tough times ahead."

Army Capt. Russell Rippetoe, 27, sent a bouquet of lilies to his mother with a card: "Relax Ma, I'll see you soon."

A suicide bomber killed him.

Some of what they shared was travelogue, like the dolphins splashing past the USS Ponce.

Army 1st Lt. Jeffrey Kaylor, 24, described the weather in an e-mail to his mother: "Imagine standing outside with a long sleeve shirt and pants in the peak of Virginia's heat. Then take a hair dryer and set it to hot and turn it on. Let the hair dryer blow on your face and that is not even comparable to how hot it is."

More than anything, what animated them was talk of their return, football season with Dad, going out on their boat to catch catfish, hooking up with Tammie.

"Start the countdown until I get home," Capt. James Adamouski, 29, wrote to his newlywed wife. "7 June would be a good ballpark figure."

For a joke, Staff Sgt. Lincoln Hollinsaid's mother wrote a letter to her son's commanding officer: "Please excuse Linc from the army as his mom needs him home. Signed, Mom." Hollinsaid, 27, replied to her, "Cute note. I will be sure to show that to top (first sergeant). I will be on the first plane back. Yeah right."

Soon after he wrote that, his vehicle was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.

After he died, one last letter arrived.

"Ma," he wrote. "When I come back home, we will have to have another campfire in the garden, but twice as big, with pizza, lots of greasy pizza. Oh lord, I can smell it now."


? 2003 The Washington Post Company


Sempers,

Roger