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E-Mails Reveal a Fallen Soldier's Story

May-11-2007 » Filed Under: 3/2 SBCT

SSG Darrell R. Griffin Jr., a soldier with the 2-3 INF, 3/2 SBCT, was killed in Iraq in March 2007. US News reporter Alex Kingsbury interviewed SSG Griffin at length when he was embedded with the unit. In the following article, which was just published, Kingsbury supplements that material by speaking with Griffin's family. The result is a must-read, and is certainly one of the most in-depth profiles of a fallen soldier that I have read. What is excerpted below is only one page of an eight page article.

By Alex Kingsbury, US News & World Report

Four days before his death, Army Staff Sgt. Darrell Ray Griffin Jr., an infantry squad leader in Baghdad, sent an E-mail to his wife, Diana. "Spartan women of Greece used to tell their husbands, before they went into battle, to come back with their shields or laying on them, dying honorably in battle. But if they did not return with their shield, this showed that they ran away from the battle. Cowardice was not a Spartan virtue ... Tell me that you love me the same by me coming back with my shield or on it."

A few days later, Diana replied. "Are you ok??? I haven't heard from you since Sunday and it is now Wednesday ... I know you said you were going on a dangerous mission ... I get so nervous when I don't hear from you ... phone call or e-mail ... I just hope and pray your ok honey ... "

It was an E-mail Griffin would never read.

As the Baghdad security plan draws thousands more troops into densely populated parts of the Iraqi capital, the danger from roadside bombs and small-arms fire grows exponentially. The city has now surpassed Anbar province as the deadliest region for U.S. troops. Since the war began, more than 3,370 American soldiers and marines have been killed and more than 25,000 wounded in Iraq, and, in terms of American casualties, the past six months have been the costliest of the war. American commanders say they expect casualties to increase in the next three months.

One of those casualties was Darrell Griffin, felled by a sniper's bullet on March 21, 2007, while patrolling in Sadr City. He was fatally shot while standing in the hatch of a Stryker armored vehicle. I interviewed him on March 3, 10 days before his 36th birthday, at a forward operating base near the town of Iskandariyah, 35 miles south of the city where he was killed. The desert sun was bright, and he wore a pair of dark glasses, which covered his eyes but couldn't conceal a spasmodic muscle tic in his face. He was quite self-conscious about the tic, he confessed, but shrugged it off. "That's what happens after two combat tours in Iraq." We talked about a recent battle and about his collection of digital photographs chronicling his two tours in Iraq. He'd seen things, he said, that he could never tell his wife or family on the phone.

We had met the day before, inside a dusty green tent on the base. It was about 10 o'clock on a Friday evening, and the men of Charger Company's 3rd platoon, 2-3 Stryker Brigade, were preparing for a mission to nab a local suspected troublemaker who was holed up in a farmhouse outside of town. Griffin was a big guy, even without the bulky body armor, helmet, and "dangle"—what soldiers call the bits of gear that they clip, strap, or otherwise buckle to their uniforms. He had half a dozen rifle magazines strapped across his chest, two radios, a medical pack, a flashlight, a digital camera, and a variety of other pouches and pockets swollen with kit.

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