"As war memories fade, team seizing chance to find GIs" by Elisabeth Bumiller, New York Times | September 6, 2009
BAULER, Germany - Almost 65 years later....
The Globe just can't get itself out of the past, huh?
Related: "Ninety years ago ago"
Also see: The Boston Globe is Old Propaganda
Globe Finally Salutes War Dead
As nearly 200,000 US troops fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, a little-known unit is engaged in the herculean and at times quixotic task of trying to account for more than 84,000 Americans still missing from the nation’s previous wars. Most of the effort has focused on those lost in Vietnam....
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One of the missing, yet not....
"Jordan Brochu, 20; soldier was top athlete, cook" by Associated Press | September 3, 2009
JORDAN BROCHU
OAKLAND, Maine - A soldier from Maine who was killed in Afghanistan was remembered as an outgoing high school student who excelled as an athlete and loved to cook.
Private First Class Jordan Brochu and another soldier died Monday in Shuyene Sufia from wounds they suffered in an improvised explosive device attack, according to the Department of Defense.
Mr. Brochu’s family moved to Maine for his senior year in high school. His coaches at Lake Region High School, where he graduated in 2008, told the Morning Sentinel in Waterville that he played football and qualified for the state track meet as a discus thrower. He also was involved in culinary arts, with a fondness for baking cookies....
Mr. Brochu was the second man from Maine killed in Afghanistan in August. A Marine from New Portland, Lance Corporal Joshua Bernard, died Aug. 14 of injuries sustained during combat operations in Helmand Province.
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Also related:
He could not leave a comrade behind
Not all the heroes are dead.... yet.
"Reservist is both teacher, student in Afghan war zone" by James F. Smith, Globe Staff | September 8, 2009
Bobby Vongphakdy never forgot that his father had to drop out of high school in his native Laos because of the brutal war that engulfed the Southeast Asian country in the 1970s. After the communist takeover there, the family escaped to a new life in suburban Boston where the elder Vongphakdy took a job as a janitor in a Dunkin’ Donuts.
So as he grew up in Saugus, Bobby Vongphakdy made it his goal to learn, and to keep on learning.
In return for the privilege of learning, he found ways to serve his adopted country - and to offer lessons to others.
At age 33, and already in his 14th year of service with the Air Force, Master Sergeant Vongphakdy is on a yearlong tour of active duty at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan at a critical moment for the American mission there. As Afghans voted last month in a presidential election that many see as a test for the fledgling democratic government, Taliban rebels have stepped up their attacks, pushing US military casualties to the highest monthly levels since the US invasion in October 2001.
Vongphakdy is one of about 200 reservists from Westover Air Force Base in Chicopee - the nation’s largest reserve air base - who are currently serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. And he is one of the roughly 19,000 Massachusetts men and women who have served in the war zones since Sept. 11, 2001, putting their careers on hold and leaving families to face the stresses of a loved one’s yearlong absence.
All over that damn lie.
Vongphakdy leads a civil engineering team on the base - and he is teaching engineering skills to Afghans who work with him. Most evenings, on his own time, he volunteers as a conversational English teacher.
He’s still learning, too....
When Vongphakdy graduated from Saugus High School at 17, his dream was to be the first in the family to go to college. But his parents didn’t have the money, so he enlisted in the Air Force as a way to pay for his education.
After completing four years of active duty in 1999, he used the GI Bill to enroll at Mount Ida College in Newton. After two years there, he transferred to Northeastern University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering in 2005.
Just one degree didn’t satisfy him. While still holding a full-time job, he went to Boston University, where he has nearly completed a second bachelor’s in biomedical laboratory and clinical science. And he has his eye on a master’s degree next.
He met his wife, Ana, who is studying for the same degree, at BU. They married in April 2008, and have a 1-year-old daughter, Kayla. Ana says she and Kayla have faced hardships in Bobby’s absence. She had to postpone her studies and returned to work at Biogen in Cambridge, and is juggling her job and day care while Bobby serves overseas....
Well, it is nice she had a job to go back to. Too bad her husband isn't home where he should be.
But they are able to speak every day via Skype, the free Internet telephone service....
Next best thing, right?
Vongphakdy’s grandfather was an officer in the Lao Royal Army during the Vietnam War, and helped the Americans find Viet Cong locations in Laos.
Oh, so the KID'S DAD was a U.S. ASSET!!
Vongphakdy enlisted in the Air Force for eight years, including four years in the Reserve after active duty, but he stayed on, serving one weekend a month and 15 days of annual training a year that has brought him within two steps of chief master sergeant, the highest noncommissioned officer rank. He is allowed to stay in for 33 years in all. “I’ll probably spend the next 19 years in the Reserve,’’ he said.
At Bagram, the main US base in Afghanistan, Vongphakdy said he works with a civil engineering unit that supports a Provincial Reconstruction Team. His unit’s responsibilities include teaching local Afghans some of the basic civil engineering skills that he learned in school and on the job as the senior computer-aided design operator and mechanical-electrical-plumbing coordinator for City Lights Electrical Co. of Canton. (His firm won a state veterans award in February for its strong support for military reserve troops. In addition to Vongphakdy, another employee, Sergeant Andre Grant of Canton, is also on active duty.)
Vongphakdy said about 10 of the Afghans he has trained have gone on to jobs with contracting firms. “We were always taught that if we’re going to win this war, it’s going to be by concrete and asphalt, and teaching them what we know and getting them on their feet and teaching them a trade,’’ he said. “That way it’ll be easier for them to support their families.’’
What is GOOD for THEM should be GOOD for America, too, right?
In his spare time, he is teaching English to South Korean police officers stationed at the base as part of the international force there.
Vongphakdy understands what it takes to face a new language and culture. He is proud that his father, Bounpheng, worked day and night to rise from being a janitor to co-owning a successful Japanese restaurant, Misono, in Peabody. He said his father still works six days a week, 12 hours a day. His parents are separated; his mother also works long hours in North Carolina.
Seems like everyone has work except me.
Vongphakdy also has an 8-year-old son from a prior relationship who lives with his mother in Wakefield. His father said Bobby was at times hard to control in high school, but once he joined the Air Force he settled down quickly....
Yeah, kids; some things are more important than school.
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