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REMEMBERING WAR DEAD

May-30-2005 » Filed Under: 1/25 SBCT

This story describes the events surrounding SPC Sayles' death.

Link to Full Article (subscription)
By Kirsten Scharnberg, Chicago Tribune

MOSUL, Iraq -- In places like this, memorials come more than one day a year.

They come when a young soldier refuses to enter a shiny new mess hall that has opened to replace the one destroyed by a suicide bomber who killed four of his friends.

They come in U.S. express mail packages holding copper bracelets engraved with the names of comrades lost.

They come when a young company commander looks at one of his new officers and somberly remarks, "That kid's got a tough job--coming in here to replace a guy who's back in the States recovering from severe burns from an explosion."

No one needs to remind the nearly 700 men of the 1st Battalion of the Army's 24th Infantry Regiment to remember.

After eight months in Iraq in which 11 soldiers from their unit have been killed in action and more than 140 wounded, they pretty much exist in a constant state of working memorial: On patrol they drive past the street corner where Spec. Clinton Gertson was shot and killed; when they head out in their armored Stryker vehicles, they pull on flame-retardant gloves in even the most oppressive summer heat because they remember seeing men's hands nearly burned off from the flash heat of a big explosion.

There are certainly moments of formal remembrance. On Saturday evening, while many Americans attended holiday barbecues or settled in for the long weekend, much of the 1-24 Battalion gathered for a memorial service for Benjamin Morton, 24, a sergeant killed in a firefight several days earlier. [...]

On Saturday afternoon before the memorial was to begin for Sgt. Morton, Deuce-Four was hit again. A roadside bomb went off as a platoon of soldiers searched cars for weapons. [...]

The story continues with a very graphic description of the injuries to Deuce Four soldiers.


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