To this mother, war is personal

[flamingyouth]

Linda Swanberg hadn't seen the front page of last Monday's paper, which sat folded between us like the proverbial elephant in the living room.

I slid it across the table and looked down as she opened it and took in the headline: "U.S. toll in Iraq hits 3,000."

A moment passed, and then another.

"The numbers, I have to say, don't mean anything to me," Swanberg, 56, said with a sigh. "I wonder what number Shane was, and then I think, 'What difference does it make?' "

Indeed, her son, Lance Cpl. Shane Swanberg, 24, is gone, killed Sept. 15, 2005, by an explosive device as he stood between the mess hall and the barracks at his base camp in Ramadi. He was holding two bowls of cereal — one for a friend who had ducked into the latrine.

The medic who got to him first told Linda Swanberg that her son looked peaceful in death: an abrasion on his forehead, a broken nose. He had been in Iraq for just 10 days, long enough to send just two e-mails home.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003513349_brodeur07m0.html

[Rick Myers]

1. And there are more than 3000 of those stories...

How unbelieveably WRONG this entire invasion was...

K and R

:kick:

[maddezmom]

2. I can not imagine her pain

:cry:

[TahitiNut]

3. "an explosive device"??

"as he stood between the mess hall and the barracks at his base camp in Ramadi"??

That's a strange euphemism. Why not "indirect fire" if it was a mortar or RPG? Is there some implication that the base camp was infilitrated and a bomb was planted? For someone in-country only 10 days and a Lance Corporal, fragging is improbable.

There's something really bizarre about that characterization of his cause of death.

On edit: OK ... it's the reporter. And the editor. He was killed in a mortar attack.

Lance Cpl. Shane C. Swanberg, 24, of Kirkland, Wash., died Sept. 15 from an explosion resulting from indirect fire at Forward Operating Base, Camp Ramadi, Iraq. Swanberg was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Twentynine Palms, Calif. As part of Operation Iraqi Freedom, his unit was attached to 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward).

http://www.defenselink.mil/Releases/Release.aspx?ReleaseID=8872

R.I.P. Shane :patriot: :cry:

[Fenris]

4. "What difference does it make?"

Indeed.

:(

[dogday]

5. My deepest sympathies

I can't begin to even imagine the heartache she must be feeling... I hope I never have to.....

[ray of light]

6. That is so sad. My deepest heartfelt sympathies to her and her family

I know her heart is broken and a number is useless.

[pacalo]

7. I wouldn't want to be around her when the truth sets in.

Reading the article, I get the impression she doesn't know much background about the timeline of this mess in Iraq.

[leftchick]

8. I weep for these families

but how can a mother think like this? I would NEVER encourage my sons to join the military!

<snip>

For Linda Swanberg, though, the war will never be political. It is personal, just as it was that day when she sat on the couch in her Kirkland home, listening to Shane tell her he felt "directionless," and that maybe he should join the Marines.

"I said I thought it was a good idea," she told me. "I encouraged him. I thought it would square him away and get him situated in life.

"I didn't think that if anything happened, it was going to happen to him."

But it did. And it was — and still is — surreal. The way they came to her office at the Redmond Fire Department to give her the news. The flag-draped coffin. The missing. The way the electronics department at Fred Meyer, where Shane used to disappear, can nearly bring her to her knees.

:cry: