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Virginia’s sons
wo members of the Virginia Army National
Guard were killed in Afghanistan Saturday by a
blast that destroyed their armored Humvee and
an Afghan interpreter as well. They had been in the war zone only a little over a month and the sudden death surprised their comrades and their families at home. War for the 3rd Battalion of the 116th Infantry Regiment had suddenly become very real.
The National Guard is a great American institution that traces its history to the Minutemen of Lexington and Concord. It is Sunday picnics and emergency flood service and two week’s training every summer and money for college. It is ah American institution, the citizen soldier; a neighbor who has taken up arms to defend his family and ours. It is, of course, also war in remote places.
President Lyndon Johnson was often criticized for not calling in National Guard units during the Vietnam War. A lot of men and women in the Guard served with distinction as individuals in Vietnam, but Johnson, the consummate American politician, was worried about calling up the Guard. It meant that his actions would be scrutinized by state legislatures and governors and by many people remote from the costs of the Asian war. He knew that in his native Texas and many states the Guards were in a sense the children of the state.
President George W. Bush inherited a military force after the end of the national draft far more dependent upon the National Guard than it was in the 1960s and he has activated hundreds of thousands of guards in the war on terror, Afghanistan and later Iraq. Whether that will be a political mistake will play out in coming elections and American history.
But Lyndon Johnson was right about one thing, the guardsmen are the children of their state. The two men who died, Staff Sgt. Craig William Cherry, 39, of Winchester, and Sgt. Bobby E. Beasley, 36, of Inwood, W.Va., leave families and loved ones. The lives of their families and comrades will never be the same.
Our lives are less for their passing too. When we are playing with our children or sleeping undisturbed in our homes at night, we should say a prayer of thanks that these young sons of Virginia were willing to leave their homes to protect us.
Letters to the editor
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