Tuppence

779th Battalion insignia

The bees work.
Their work is taken from them.
We are like the bees—
But it won't last
Forever
--Black Workers, Langston Hughes

What you gonna do
When the well run dry?
You gonna sit right down and cry
--I'm Walkin', Fats Domino
________________

Ranger's going to take down a local feel-good story, not because he is a killjoy, but because the subtext feels very bad.

A simple gesture to ensure one soldier was not left out of a family tradition led to an entire battalion of some 2,000 soldiers in Iraq uniting for a run/walk.

First Sgt. Jay Monismith of the Tallahassee-based 779th Engineer Battalion wanted to observe April 24 by wearing a tan shirt that acknowledged the sudden death of his niece, Sarah, who died 37 hours after birth due to a heart defect in 2001.

Monismith, who's stationed in Iraq, asked his captain if the section could march in remembrance of Sarah on the day of the March of Dimes run/walk in Charlotte, N.C., where Sarah's family lives (Soldiers of the 779th In Iraq Unite for March of Dimes.)

His request morphed into the "779th Engineer Battalion Birth Defects Awareness Day Fun Run/Walk."

Ranger is certainly not against the March of Dimes, a righteous organization if ever there was one. But the darker implications of the battalion's act are two-fold:

[1] Can we actually believe the 779th is defending anyone's freedoms if they have the time to stage Fun Runs?

If this were really war and if they were really executing an effective military mission, time for such non-military activities would not be available. Further, it is difficult to imagine physically executing a run in a hostile environment. Obviously they will run in a safe area, making the claim that they are "fighting a war to support us" questionable.

[2] It costs $1 Million per year to keep a U.S. soldier deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan. Since the 779th has 2,000 soldiers, we would save $2 Billion by bringing them home from a senseless, useless phony war, and could then use that money for infant mortality issues.

This would benefit the Homeland more than 2,00o soldiers walking in the sand for nickels and dimes.

A tuppence compared to the waste to which they are made a party.