Soul Ranger
Stand
Photo by Horst Faas
“In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.” ― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Thank you fallen brothers, for your sacrifice.
Bart, I had occasion to reflect on the loss of two friends, before I came to N/Co, who gave all that they had to give on the 17th of September, 1969. Another, my brother Julian, likewise gave all that he had to give on the 15th of February, 1971, serving as a point man with A/4/3rd INF RGT, 11th LIB. I was present at the death of the first two, Joe Servantez and ‘Doc’ Rodriguez, as we served in the same Company, C/1/503rd PIR. Blood was spilled that day, I smelt it as it left their bodies, I walked through it as I followed the mournful procession back up the mountain ravine in the An Lao. Perhaps it was a camp some of you Rangers had encountered and reported. We were a Recon in force Company that day sent to make contact. But the terrain was too difficult to reinforce quickly from platoons on other ridges. So we took our dead and wounded with us as we were extracted by one full chopper at a time back to LZ English. We remember the sacrifice of those who died. And as a Christian, I remember the sacrifice of the One who died on another blood-stained mountain, Calvary.