Modern War Heroes » inspirational

Soldier’s Sacrifice

admin — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:54:09 +0000

I found this lovely essay written by a soldier’s mother. She has been lucky and hasn’t had the misfortune of losing her son in the field that so many military moms are facing. She reflects on this, and makes comparisons of her son to another young soldier who recently lost his life in Afghanistan.

Click here to read her essay.

Soldier’s Son Takes Father’s Legacy And Fulfills Promise

admin — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:56:21 +0000

This is beautiful. This shows that war is only fought by those men who really have nothing to do with the debate that started the whole mess. When you get down to it, it’s just regular men trapped in a terrifying muddy hole somewhere far from home.

64 years ago, at the battle of Iwo Jima, two soldiers sat together in a foxhole: a 24-year-old American lieutenant, Fiorenzo Lopardo, and his captive, 26-year-old Japanese sergeant major, Taizo Sakai.

Neither spoke the other’s language, but both spoke a bit of French, and, during the three days that Lopardo was waiting for American intelligence agents to take Sakai into custody to find out what he knew about the Japanese military’s plans, the two young, frightened men created a bond.

Sakai believed that the American intelligence officers would kill him after they extracted the information they needed. If he did manage to survive, he thought that the shame upon him for surrendering would be so great that he would never be allowed to return home. So he had a special request for Lopardo.

While the two soldiers waited in the foxhole, Sakai passed Lopardo two photos: a black-and-white image of him and his wife, who he had married the year before; and a photo of the couple and their 4-year-old niece. Sakai gave the photographs to Lopardo, asking him to keep them safe—and, if possible, to send them home to his family, who he believed he would never see again.

Lopardo accepted the request, and kept the photos safe in his possession throughout the rest of the war, and after his return home to his family. He never found out what happened to Sakai, and though he searched for the Japanese soldier’s family, he was never able to locate them.

“He told me and my sister, Lisa, about his desire to return the photos, but he never really had a way to do it,” Lopardo’s son Steve told the San Diego Union Tribune. “This was the days before the Internet. Finding people was a lot harder.”

But after Lopardo’s death a few years ago, Steve decided to take on his father’s quest. He tracked down soldiers from his father’s battalion, looked at previously-classified interrogation reports, and even talked to Japanese tourists he encountered about his mission, but found no leads.

However, one of the tourists he’d met had told a newspaper about his story, and it soon got picked up a Japanese television station. A Japanese government official who saw the program decided to put his staff’s efforts into locating the family.

Finally, last September, Steve Lopardo received an email from a Japanese official: “We found the family, it said. “Will you come and deliver the photos?”

Soon, Lopardo hopped on a plane to Yokohama to fulfill his father’s legacy, not knowing what to expect. On his arrival, he discovered that Sakai had not been killed or shunned after all—he had given the American troops a fake name to protect his family. After his release, Sakai (actually Sakamoto) returned home to his family. He and his wife had six children together, and both passed away in the late 1980s.

Sakai’s son and two daughters were there to welcome Lopardo—along with Sakai’s niece, who was in the photograph.

“Sixty-three years ago, my father accepted these photographs from Taizo Sakai and promised to safeguard them,” Lopardo said in Japanese—he didn’t speak the language, but had gotten his speech translated, and practiced it for weeks, so that he would be able to communicate with Sakai’s family. “With respect to both our ancestors, I now return them to your family.”

After passing over the photographs, fulfilling the promise that his father had made to that frightened Japanese soldier so many years ago, Lopardo’s eyes filled with tears.

“It was very, very fulfilling,” he said. “One of the greatest moments of my life.”(Gimundo)

Red Cross Worker Killed in Crossfire

admin — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 19:49:43 +0000

After a long day at the office moving boxes and securing the arrival of humanitarian supplies, Red Cross logistics coordinator Vatche Arslanian had just one more thing to do. Give a ride home to an employee who lived on the other side of Baghdad.It was a final act of kindness for the husky Canadian with the hearty laugh who dedicated much of his life to helping people in need.

Arslanian, 48, died April 8 when his car was caught in the crossfire between coalition and Iraqi troops. His employee was shot, but was able to run away. A day later, when the battle ended, Arslanian’s body was recovered, still clothed in his white Canadian Red Cross T-shirt, officials said. Read on…

Arslanian was a real force in Baghdad. He could speak Arabic, and this knowledge helped him help hundreds of Iraqis caught amidst the devastation. His work with the Red Cross enabled many Iraqis to get the food, water, and medical attention and supplies that they needed. Certainly he was a hero.

The Ultimate Gift

admin — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 15:28:07 +0000

In an earlier post I featured a young man who threw himself in front of a tripwire blast to save his comrades. His story had a happy ending – he suffered only minor injuries. But most of these stories don’t turn out so well. Read this article that talks about more brave men who made the ultimate sacrifice in order to save their friends and fellow soldiers.

Volunteer Doctors are Heroes

admin — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:14:56 +0000

Dedication to a cause has no limits:

With bombs falling around them, Doctors Without Borders refused to leave Iraq — continuing to work in a Baghdad hospital treating the torrent of sick and wounded despite the dangers of war.It wasn’t long before two members of the Medecins Sans Frontieres — as the group is known internationally — were carted away to the regime’s most notorious prisons by the Iraqi secret police, accused of being spies.

“The way that they presented it, [it is] as if they don’t believe humanitarian work at all,” said Ibrahim Younis, 31, an aid worker taken from his hotel April 2 along with Francois Calas, 44, head of the doctors’ Baghdad mission.

Calas and Younis were held in a vast jail and two crowded prisons before being freed April 11. The two men and four volunteer doctors who worked at al Kindi hospital in northeast Baghdad resumed their healing work a short time later. Read on…

This is truly an inspiring account. While these men aren’t soldiers, they risked it all to be where they were most needed. And they didn’t let their bad experiences get them down or discourage them. They jumped back into the fray!

Hero at Home

admin — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:32:50 +0000

I just ran across this beautiful article. It is written by a woman who has had massive kidney problems for years. As the disease progressed, she eventually had to be put on dialysis due to her kidneys failing. One of the things she did to keep her spirits up was to volunteer with Books for Soldiers, an organization dedicated to donating and shipping books to soldiers around the world. She would even write letters and slip them into the books she was shipping.

One soldiers request for “The Eddas” peaked her curiosity, as she had never heard of this book before. She didn’t send this book, but in her letter asked about it. This small incident sparked a friendship. Both would write back and forth to each other, learning about the other’s life.

The soldier (his first name is Dennis) returned from Iraq, and about a month later went to visit this woman. Soon after she received an email from Dennis offering her one of his kidneys. She had received offers before from well meaning friends, without follow through, so she was cautious. But after deliberation, Dennis went through with his amazingly generous gift.

This was in 2005, and she proclaims herself healthy thanks to Dennis. He is currently deployed and continues to help with the Books for Soldiers charity. Dennis shows us that heroes are found anywhere, and they certainly can be found here at home as well as out on the front lines.