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An Iraqi girl’s life ends but image lingers

May-10-2005 » Filed Under: 1/25 SBCT

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MATT MISTEREK; The News Tribune

MOSUL, Iraq – Spc. Moises Medina regrets now that he even asked the question.

The young girl he was treating – the victim of a car bomber on a crowded street in west Mosul – made him think of his own daughter back in Spanaway. The 24-year-old Stryker brigade medic checked the Iraqi girl’s vital signs and tried to keep her alive on the way to the hospital.

At some point he felt compelled to ask: How old is she?

“Two years and two months,” Medina recalled the answer Monday. “I pretty much knew that she wasn’t going to make it, but I have a daughter the same age. I made the mistake of asking.

“This one will be with me for a long time.”

By now, much of the world has seen the wrenching photograph of a Fort Lewis officer cradling a dying toddler after a suicide bomber left a neighborhood in ashes last week. It has appeared in newspapers everywhere, galvanizing the emotions of everyone from soccer moms to bloggers to the commander of the 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division.

“It shows the compassion of the American soldier versus the evil of the terrorists and religious extremists,” said Col. Bob Brown, who leads the Stryker troops in northern Iraq.

What the world will likely never see is a single image that captures the quick actions of the brigade’s infantry scouts. Patrolling a part of the city where they circulate nearly every day, they were the first to swoop in after seeing a dark plume rise in the west on April 28.


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