Recognizing patriots
By Pat Caldwell
Sunday, November 4, 2007 2:04 AM PST
And so, Friday, a U.S. Army paratrooper came home to Malheur County.
By all accounts, Joshua Brennan, a sergeant in a paratrooper outfit with a long, illustrious battle history, was dedicated and doing exactly what he wanted to do.
That, in itself, is gratifying. In the end, how many of us can look into the mirror every day and say, “I’m doing what I want to do and what I believe in.”
This newspaper had a relationship with Sgt. Brennan, though not a link like his family or his friends, but a tenuous bond nonetheless.
In May we printed a story about Sgt. Brennan. He was home on leave and spoke to one of our reporters. In early October we printed another story focusing on Sgt. Brennan’s mother, Janice Gates.
We pondered our future coverage regarding Sgt. Brennan and made a decision to write about him when he returned from Afghanistan once his tour was up.
So our shock, when we learned of his death, was sudden and hard.
This is not the first time the war on terror has touched us here at home. In 2005, this community lost another patriot, John Ogburn. Ogburn, an Oregon Army National Guardsman and a member of Ontario’s Alpha Company, 3rd Battalion, 116th Cavalry, died near Kirkuk, Iraq.
The loss of these two good men, separated by years and different circumstances on different battlefields, represents more than just two more names on a casualty list.
Instead, their sacrifice, their commitment and their service symbolizes the very best of our community, our state and our nation.
Their sacrifice also is a clear example of how this community — a set of towns dotting the landscape of a small portion of our republic — is forever linked with the war on terror. Our contribution to this global fight is real and ever-present and, sometimes, it stings.
It stings because we look upon these men, these patriots, and know they have given up what Lincoln called “the last full measure of devotion” for us, for our communities for our country. No matter what one’s politics are, no matter where one stands on the global war on terror or Iraq or Afghanistan, the hard fact remains that these men stood a post on a distant land and put it all on the line for a theme — democracy — that most of us take for granted.
We take for granted our way of life, take for granted our televisions will work, the power will stay on, that our schedules will not be interrupted and our ideas will be free to flow.
Yet there is always a price, a bill to pay for our luxuries. They are paying that bill, every day.
Sgt. Brennan’s case is a classic example. Many probably do not know, as I did not know, that Sgt. Brennan’s fellow paratroopers are fighting the war on terror in the worst kind of climate in conditions you or I can only distantly imagine.
And they’re young, mostly, some barely out of high school. Kids, really, who one would expect to be going to college or planning their marriages or generally getting on in life. But they’re not. They’re airlifted into a distant, secluded valley somewhere in Afghanistan with all that they will survive on — food, water, ammunition, especially ammunition — packed on their backs. They are tasked with finding and destroying a motivated, extremely dangerous enemy fueled by hate and propaganda. They march up mountains you and I would never make; they do not get showers, and they live in the dirt and the muck and the cold in the winter and the unbearable heat in the summer. They’re the very best we have, and sometimes I wonder if we all know that.
We sit in our homes every night and enjoy our comforts while somewhere, far away, a young paratrooper or Ranger or Marine shoulders a weapon and waits for the next mission on a high, rugged mountain.
Over the entire image, though, there is a question, barely above a whisper: Where do we get such men and women? Where do they come from? How are we so lucky to have such patriots standing on a distant post?
Lincoln, on another battlefield so long ago, said it best.
“But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here,” he wrote in the Gettysburg Address.
We cannot forget the sacrifice of brave men like Brennan and Ogburn. We can, and should, mourn their loss. But we should, in some way, be grateful that there are such men, such patriots, on that distant post standing guard for us. We are a great community containing real and true patriots. To know that, all one has to do is look at Sgt. Joshua Brennan or Sgt. John Ogburn. For us, for myself as editor, it was an honor and a privilege to do stories on men like Ogburn and Brennan.
We owe them a huge debt. One, I’m afraid, we may never be able to repay.
Pat Caldwell is the editor of the Argus Observer. He can be contacted at PatC@argusobserver.com
