Wednesday, November 14, 2007

One man's war

On this Veterans Day, many stories are being printed in many newspapers, many veterans are joining together to share stories and catch up with each other. The News-Observer has one man's story of his time and what went down.
On this night in his dream, like every night, Stephens will keep a promise -- to his soldiers and, in particular, to the mother of a blue-eyed gunner named Danny.

Nearly four years ago, in January 2004, the N.C. National Guard platoon sergeant stood in an Army classroom facing that mother and the families of the 40 men he was about to lead into war.

He stood 6-foot-4 and infantry-lean, and in the confident voice familiar to his men, he made a promise: I'll bring your sons home.

He had wanted it to be true.

Even then, Stephens knew he was lying....

....Stephens, 40, would be anointed a hero, praised by the Pentagon and the media, earning one of the nation's highest honors for a day of valor that left him weeping under a desert night, his uniform soaked in another man's blood, his lessons about sacrifice and heroism only beginning.

In the years after his deployment to Iraq, Stephens would see how a single firefight would change his soldiers, change himself and fundamentally alter the life of one Jacksonville mother. He would come home from war to find he had become a different man, one seeking help from an Army that didn't know how to give it. He would try to fulfill a promise he had no right to make and shoulder the wounds of a grieving woman and a platoon of haunted men.
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And neither his story nor Danny's need be told except for the actions of a group of greedy, stupid, no make that evil, men who had and still have no idea of how wrong they were. And every day more mother's sons are broken and killed for their evil. And they don't give a damn.

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