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Soldier aren't statistics--they're real people

Mar-10-2006 » Filed Under: 172nd SBCT

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By Michelle Cuthrell

It seems nearly every time I turn on the network news or check out the newest national news Web site, I hear about another U.S. soldier who has died in Iraq, and what that soldier's death now brings the U.S. death toll to. But, unless he's a high-ranking officer or a Pat Tillman-type figure, rarely do I hear on these national reports anything specific about the recently killed soldier, his passions, or even so much as his name.

As a reporter myself, it's always disgusted me how easily some of my fellow journalists can turn the sacrifices of soldiers into simple statistics. But this week, after complaining about this phenomenon to my colleagues for months, I found myself guilty, in my own way, of the very same thing.

Wednesday afternoon, I had the great privilege of attending the memorial service of Stryker soldier Spc. Joshua Pearce, who was killed when an improvised explosive device detonated near his Stryker vehicle on Feb. 26.

I initially attended the service to honor one of those many fallen U.S. soldiers.

As I entered the Northern Lights Chapel at exactly 2 p.m., though, I was immediately hit by the revelation that this wasn't just some nameless soldier. The place was packed, and though I was on time, I had to grab a seat in the overflow area set up in the chapel lobby.

From my place in the back, I listened as friends, commanders and chaplains spoke about this man I had just minutes earlier counted as "another fallen Stryker soldier." I learned how Spc. Pearce had been voted "best looking" in his high school, and how he was largely considered the life of the party. I heard the story of the day he painted a local water tower, and the time he dressed up as a Spice Girl and performed a song with his friends. I was told where he hid the dirty dishes his mother had assigned him to clean, and what color wig he donned the previous Halloween.

And I learned that on Sept. 11, 2005, this young man who I knew nothing about just five minutes earlier had published a letter to the editor in his hometown Oklahoma newspaper stating, "I do not want to die, but if that's what I was put on this earth to do, then everyone should know that I went for a cause that in my heart was worth dying for."


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