delcielo's Journal: Entry 4... Lori Ann

Today I was listening (as usual) to war coverage on the way to work. They were broadcasting a story on Lori Ann Piestawa, the woman killed in the same attack in which Jessica Lynch was captured. A teacher from Tuba City, AZ was talking about her 2nd graders' reactions to the war, Lori Ann's MIA status, and then finally, her death. One of Lori Ann's nephews is a student in this teacher's class.

I found myself choking up while listening. In fact, I've come close to it on nearly every story regarding either Lori Ann or Jessica. Each time, I sort of brush back anything that has escaped embarassedly and go on.

It's the same thing a lot of people are doing, I'd imagine. You temper your emotions with the knowledge that the old cliches are all correct. War is indeed hell, and people die in war, war is not a game, etc. At the same time, I don't want to be numb. I don't want to shield myself entirely from the sadness. What sort of person would I be if I shut off such sensitivities?

Even so, I was genuinely puzzled about what made those two peoples' stories so moving. At one level, the answer was embarrassingly predictable. I've been socialized to accept the fact that men die in battle. I'm accustomed to the idea that if there was a sufficiently large conflict, I could be called into service and die in hostilities. However unlikely, I have since the age of 18 recognized that fact and dealt with it. I have also seen men of my acquaintance go off to service and to war. But women...

When I imagine my wife, female friends, or even my daughter who won't be old enough for a long time going off in harm's way it sends a chill of urgency through my soul for their protection. Is this cheauvenistic? I'm ashamed to say that in some degree it may be, though perhaps not as some might expect.

I don't know how much actual hand-to-hand combat there is in war these days; but I think that's probably the only place where a man might have an advantage, and I suspect that a woman who can carry her pack, hike the distance, and shoot her gun could be as effective an infantry soldier as any man.

So I don't believe that women should be relegated to non-combat positions. I don't think they should be stuck in the maintenance divisions, hospitals, etc. I think they should allowed to drive tanks, fly fighters and chew dirt like the men.

What strikes at my heart is the idea that they're more valuable than we men. When I think of my wife and daughter, I can't help feeling that they're more important than I am. They should be protected from harm, from combat. That's the job of saps like myself. I'm a man. I'm more expendable. I'm a tool for certain jobs. I've known my whole life that I was born male and that these things were my lot in life. So when I see reports of Lori Ann, Jessica, or indeed Shoshana Johnson who is a prisoner of war, the sacrifice seems greater. I can't help it.

So what are the less obvious reasons for my reaction? In Jessica's case, her youth astounds me. I work with an Explorer Scout's group in town. I teach students aged 14-18 how to fly airplanes. So I'm not new to the concept of young people doing things that are generally considered the fare of older, more mature people. I myself went through the program and got my pilot's license at 18: so I'm also familiar with the easy dismissal with which the young person views the subject. There is a truth in that dismissal that we adults sometimes ignore.

And yet, Jessica isn't flying a Cessna trainer over the wheat fields of Kansas. She's shooting Iraqi soldiers and getting shot by them. She's getting beaten in captivity. Beaten and perhaps more.

The fact that she didn't actually die does not change the idea I have in my head that she gave her life for her country. Rather than throw down her weapon and surrender, she made the decision to fight to the death. The accident of her survival doesn't diminish that fact to me at all. And when I look at the 18 year-old Jessica in my ground school class, I can't imagine asking that sacrifice of her, this year or next. Rob, my last student, is now Jessica Lynch's age. It seems impossible that I, as part of our country, might ask him to suffer the pains of a hostile death.

If I look at my students in class, I can't help looking at their legs, arms, bodies. An older person like myself has had the use of these things longer. It seems more appropriate to ask me to surrender them, though I know that mine aren't as useful. How presumptuous we all are, to live life every day without a care in the world, oblivious to the sacrifices we've asked for.

Finally, the more personal aspect of my sorrow this morning stems from a feeling of connection, however tenuous, to Lori Ann.

I am not Native American. I don't live in Arizona; and yet, the desert southwest seems more like home to me than this town in which I was born and raised. As I watch the news teams descend on Tuba City, I think; "You are here for the week. You are interlopers in a society that you do not even wish to understand. Because the culture cannot be explained in 30 seconds." It is a culture that ties closely to the land. It is ancient in its knowledge of the land. You cannot trace its faith backward on a calendar to a beginning. It is ageless.

She was a Hopi, Lori Ann. And her homeland looks eerily similar to the place she died.

It makes me wonder. Did Lori Ann see that, too? Was there time for such thoughts? Did she see the mud brick homes at the edge of Iraqi towns and think of the scrub desert and adobe structures of New Mexico and Arizona? If she did, did it make her feel grounded in that strange environment, or was the task at hand too demanding? Were the blowing sands at all reminiscent of home, or the endless sky, the sparse beauty of the arroyos and brush? Did it give her comfort?

She was Hopi, Lori Ann. Did she see the Kachina in the sands of An Nasiriya?

I hope that she did.

I hope that she rests peacefully.