NOTES from the BIG CHAIR

This afternoon, I was driving down I-20 from NE Columbia toward the city when I began to pass this huge convoy of Army trucks and Humvees.
The convoy was in the right lane. I was driving in the left.
The convoy vehicles were loaded with tough-looking young soldiers, each of whom had the familiar 'AA [All American]' patches of the famous 82nd Airborne Division stitched on their sleeves.
Of course – with it being such an enormously long convoy of these young paratroopers traveling west on I-20 – it was obvious they were from Fort Bragg, N.C., and apparent that they were heading toward the Katrina damaged Gulf Coast, where other 82nd paras had already been deployed.
The convoy took up the entire right lane of the interstate for several miles.
What made it such a wonderful sight was that in the left lane, civilian drivers and passengers (young, old, black, white, some driving Mercedes, some driving smoke belching old rust-traps) were slowing as they passed each Army vehicle. The civilians then waved at the soldiers and gave them the thumbs up.
And the soldiers waved back. Some were smiling. Some tried to look tough. A few were drinking Cokes.
A few months ago, these same guys were fighting in Iraq. Now they were roaring down the highway in a long green line in central South Carolina, in the lane next to me.
As I mentioned, they looked tough. But most also looked as if they were barely old enough to shave. Some of them probably had tubes of Clearasil (or whatever teenagers use today to fight acne) stowed away in their field packs.
I briefly thought about the fact that they had not been back from Iraq for very long. For a second, I even considered the fact that – though they were all wearing their helmets and their battle gear – none of their vehicles had any armor plating. But why should they?
No one was going to shoot at them or ambush them with an IED ... not here in central South Carolina.
Never.
I looked at one of the soldiers as I passed.
He looked at me, and smiled through the sweat of his smooth, freckled face.
My eyes welled up ...

COMMENTS: Among the notes just received, Peggy Noonan emails, "That was the best thing I have read all week."
Then this from Brig. Gen. David Grange (U.S. Army, ret.), former commanding general of the 1st Infantry Division and a current CNN military analyst: "Excellent story."

WTSjr

# posted by W. Thomas Smith, Jr. @ 5:04 PM