New Kevin Sites dispatch from Iraq: Dirty for Dirty

NBC combat correspondent and weblogger Kevin Sites is in Iraq today. He's just posted a new entry on his blog — a series of interviews with American soldiers.


[O]nce they finally do get home–they will still be faced with the complex task of finding their way in a civilian society again. And while they're eager to leave their weapons and Kevlar behind, the violence they've experienced here will likely be with them in one way or another, always.

Derek Ellyson says his memories have already hardened, fixed in his mind. "You never forget the faces. I can describe to you every dead person I've seen out here. What their faces looked like, the position they were laying in." Sorokin agrees, "War brings a lot of ugly things, you see a lot of ugly things you see other people dead and sometimes when you see somebody dead you see the face of death–the way the guy died. It could be an enemy it could be an ally it doesn't matter."

Yet living with those images of death is part of the job–the same one that requires them to pull the trigger. Before going to war soldiers have always had to ask themselves if they'd be willing to die for their cause. But there is a second part to that question which for some, is more difficult to answer: would they kill for it? For most if not all in the 3rd Platoon–the question is already moot.

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