~THE REAL DEAL THANKS TO YON

The guy on the left in the picture here is LTC Erik Kurilla, big dog with the Duce Four (24th) in Iraq. He and his squad of warriors were in Mosul last Aug. 31 and had Michael Yon along. Yon was there when Kurilla was wounded in an exchange with some insurgents. Ironically, the incident occurred shortly after Kurilla had talked to the parents of one of his men who had been injured a little earlier. The picture to the left was when he was connecting up with the parents of this guy... he wanted to tell them that the guy was OK before the official channels scared the crap out of them. What a guy!

Anyhow, shortly after that call the squad came under fire and Kurilla was shot (he took 3 in the leg, breaking his femur). Just to prove what a hardass he was he then continued to direct his men while they were under fire and he was wounded, and to top it all off he called his own wife (love those satellite phones, eh?) to tell her that he was OK and not to sweat the official reports.

I tell ya... guys like that give be a giant boner. What a man! What a soldier! What a leader of men! I mean, it just gives the the tingleys. I'm so envious of these guys that I can hardly stand it.

Hemingway said that every generation of young men needed a war to test themselves on. His was in Spain. Mine was in Viet Nam. These guys are proving again that the American fighting man is the absolute best in history. Bar none. And Michael Yon was there to chronicle the action, in the same way that Hemingway was there at the bridge talking to that old man sitting in the road. Damn... I'm getting all wet. I love these guys.

Just for the record, Kurilla hooked up later with the injured soldier he was calling about earlier and made him his bodyguard while he was transiting out. Oh, damn. What a man! I'm doing it again... I'm just so damned proud to be even remotely associated with them (careful... an elderly grunt has to be proud from a distance from these warriors). Thank you gentlemen. And thank you Michael Yon. You're the kind of journalist that the rest of those pukes wish they were. I think Hemingway would be proud too.

Bob