The saddest day yet

Today is a pretty somber day. I had guard duty most of the night last night, and I woke up at noon today to news that a guy named Dave from my unit was killed in Iraq last night. I saw him only a few weeks ago. He was on leave from Iraq and went to our mobilization ceremony. I wanted to go say hello to him, but for some reason I didn’t and I regret it. He was a great guy. In his late twenties and smart. A few years back I had a class with him at Portland State. I talked to him before he first left for Iraq, and he didn’t want to go, but he was fully prepared to go and do his best. He was a good soldier, the Army desperately needs intelligent men like him.
Every time it starts to feel more like a third rate summer camp than training for war, something happens to bring the facts back into focus. Men, good men, are dying over there. They are being killed by a cowardly enemy that sets off bombs and then runs away. As a person who craves control, I hate the blind chance of it all. It rarely comes down to your proficiency as a soldier (I have met few as proficient as Dave) but rests mostly on luck. I know the statistics. I know how many men have been killed and I know how many have come home just fine. I know that everything says that myself and my friends will come back in a year and a half completely unharmed. But it is days like today that show me that no matter how great our chances are we must be better than the best when it comes to our abilities as soldiers. Life is so fragile. We have to assume that we are in danger every second from the moment our boots hit that sand. We have to stick together and take care of one another. I feel strongly that I’m going to come out of this experience just fine and a better person for it. But it puts a lump in my throat to think that good men like Dave (and the family and friends that have lost him) had to pay the ultimate price for this war.