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A Seattle Times columnist profiles David Hardt, a soldier with the 3/2 SBCT who wrote a regular column for The Ft. Lewis Ranger newspaper while deployed. He is also competing in the Seattle Marathon this Sunday in honor of the 48 soldiers the brigade lost. Best of luck, David!
By Jerry Brewer, Seattle Times
On this sleepless night, David Bruce Hardt started seeing things. They were real, not imaginary, and he felt ignorant he hadn't noticed them before.
He walked through the barracks in Iraq last July and made some stirring observations. Spc. Hardt, a Fort Lewis soldier, saw a board with all the names of his lost comrades, resting just above the door he exits through to go run each day. Hardt trudged down the hallway with his head down. He then looked up and saw a picture of a sergeant in a wheelchair, a white bandage covering his amputated leg. And he read a letter from a captain's wife, updating her husband's recovery from a devastating spinal injury.
Hardt grew angry, and once he relaxed, he made a declaration.
"On Nov. 25, 2007, I am running the Seattle Marathon," he said.
He discovered a profound reason to run, at last. During two tours in Iraq, Hardt always would run — in 125-degree heat, despite the noise of mortars and machine guns, even while more soldiers died — and his motivation was just to finish. He hadn't run a marathon in three years, stopping because he'd lost the passion to compete.
Hello, passion.
On Sunday, Hardt, 31, will run 26.2 miles, wearing a shirt with the names of 48 soldiers his Army unit lost.
He will carry a picture of his uncle Ross, who, eerily, was deployed from Fort Lewis before dying in the Vietnam War. Hardt has been struggling with right-knee tendinitis and leg pain, but he will finish. He must.
"It doesn't matter how much pain I'm going to be in," Hardt said. "I could be bleeding, and my eyes could be popping out. Run, crawl, dive or duck — I'm finishing.
[...]
Read the rest.