From Father to (Baby) Son, Last Words to Live By (KIA Iraq)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/01/us/01charles.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

He drew pictures of himself with angel wings. He left a set of his dog tags on a nightstand in my Manhattan apartment. He bought a tiny blue sweat suit for our baby to wear home from the hospital.

Then he began to write what would become a 200-page journal for our son, in case he did not make it back from the desert in Iraq.

For months before my fiancé, First Sgt. Charles Monroe King, kissed my swollen stomach and said goodbye, he had been preparing for the beginning of the life we had created and for the end of his own.

<snip>

In neat block letters, he wrote about faith and failure, heartache and hope. He offered tips on how to behave on a date and where to hide money on vacation. Rainy days have their pleasures, he noted: Every now and then you get lucky and catch a rainbow.

<snip>

He doted on Christina, now 16, his daughter from a marriage that ended in divorce. He made her blush when he showed her a tattoo with her name on his arm. Toward women, he displayed an old-fashioned chivalry, something he expected of our son. Remember who taught you to speak, to walk and to be a gentleman, he wrote to Jordan in his journal. These are your first teachers, my little prince. Protect them, embrace them and always treat them like a queen.


“Follow your heart,” Charles M. King wrote in a 200-page journal for his son, Jordan, whom he first held this fall just weeks before he died in Iraq.

[RabbitChief]

1. RIP for a true American hero

You truly will be in my memories forever. God bless and rest in peace.

[1monster]

2. I'm in tears. What a wonderful thing for him to do for his son and his

son's mother.

What a rotten thing for our country to do to him, to his son, his son's mother, and his daughter.

It looks like the world has lost a man who would have been a great father.

[DemBones DemBones]

3. His death is indeed a loss but when

a man or woman chooses a military career, he or she knows, or should know, the risks. I say this as the child of a career military man.

It was clear to me from reading the article that Charles knew the risks and had a strong feeling he would be killed in Iraq. He had made his peace with that probability and made an effort to leave something for his young son. Many children of men and women killed in Iraq will have less. What I don't understand is why he didn't marry the boy's mother so that she'd receive his death benefits.

It's a rotten war started by rotten people but when you serve in the military, you go where you're sent and do what you're told. The longer I live, the more I realize that all wars are rotten. Politicians start wars to gin up patriotism and to boost the economy. Oh, there's always some excuse, a Saddam, a Hitler, a Kaiser, but the real reasons are economic.

And a lot of good men and women die in every war, while the masters of war profit.

[PuraVidaDreamin]

4. The risks don't include being lied into war

At least they shouldn't.

I sorta hear what you are saying tho'-

PeaceIN

[shrike]

5. Why didn't he and the mother marry?

I can actually understand their reasons for wanting to have a child together, but a simple ceremony at city hall would have ensured her access to his death benefits. They could have planned the wedding to end all weddings later.

[lebkuchen]

6. Why the delay in getting the body home from Dover?

medal issue or time needed for reconstructive work on the 1st SGT?

Again, another tragic loss of human potential. This is Bush's forte, the destruction of human potential. Bush has none, so he figures no one else should, either.

[Uncle Joe]

7. Thanks for the post RamboLiberal

Kicked and recommended

[ninkasi]

8. First Sgt. Charles King

was everything a man should be. To think of his life ending because of the whims of a man who is everything a man should NOT be is heartbreaking. We will always have too many cowardly, arrogant bullies like Bush, and too few men the caliber of Sgt. King. He left his son a priceless treasure. RIP, First Sgt. King.