Veterans Day: Mark Evnin of Vermont, One Kid Out of 4,000
It's Veterans Day and I'm not thinking about the relatives who died in WW2 or served In Vietnam. I'm letting one young Vermonter, who I never met, stand in for the more than 4000 who were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He wasn't from my family. Just everybody's.
I came across him by accident. I'm Mike and my wife is Mindy so, one day, I don't know why, I plugged "Mike and Mindy" into Google and up came this other "Mike" and "Mindy" in Burlington, Vermont. Their 21 year old, Mark, was a Marine corporal who was killed in Iraq in 2003. He was 21.
I looked up their son and....what can I say?
Somehow the "Mike and Mindy" thing created a bond and I've cried about this kid every Veterans Day,
Here is a slide show about him put together by his high school.
It turns out a New York Times reporter, Peter Maass, saw Mark's death:
"The attack began at dawn with an artillery barrage that had excited marines next to my vehicle. They yelled ''Bam! Bam!'' as each shell was fired into the air. Tanks led the way into town, and as I stayed a kilometer behind at a medic station, the sounds of battle commenced, mortars and machine-gun fire that were accompanied, as ever, by the visuals of war -- smoke plumes that were an arsonist's dream.
"A half-hour into the battle, a Humvee raced out of the city and stopped at the medic station. A marine, whose body was rag-doll floppy, was pulled out and put on a stretcher. A marine doctor and medics surrounded him. His clothes were stripped off and needles and monitors placed on and into his body, and the dialogue of battlefield medicine began among the team, all of whom had slung their M-16's over their backs as they tried to save their comrade's life.
''Left lower abdomen.''
''He's in urgent surgical.''
''Wriggle your toes for me.''
''Ow, ow.''
''He needs medevac, now.''
''Iodine.''
''My arms are numb.''
''Keep talking, Evnin.''
"His name was Mark Evnin. He was a corporal, a sniper who was in one of the lead vehicles going into Al Kut. Iraqi fighters were waiting in ambush and had fired the first shots; one of them got him.
''Keep talking to us. Where are you from?''
''Remon,'' he mumbled.
''Where? Where are you from?''
''Verrrmon.''
"Evnin was not doing well. The battalion chaplain, Bob Grove, leaned over him, and because the chaplain knew Evnin was Jewish, he pulled out of his pocket a sheet with instructions for ''emergency Jewish ministration.'' Grove read the Sh'ma, which begins, ''Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God.'' Then he began reading the 23rd Psalm, at which point Evnin said, ''Chaplain, I'm not going to die.''
He did.
He was 21. One of 4000 in this war. One of a few million in all the others. Let's stop and remember, for a minute anyway.
.
a poem for Evnin, a gentle hero
.
.
If you are able, save them a place inside of you
and save one backward glance when you are leaving
for the places they can no longer go.
Be not ashamed to say you loved them,
though you may or may not have always.
Take what they have left and what they have taught you
with their dying and keep it with your own.
And in that time when men decide and feel safe
to call the war insane, take one moment to embrace
those gentle heroes you left behind.
This poem was written by Major Michael Davis O'Donnell, on January 1, 1970 in Dak To, Vietnam. Major O'Donnell was a helicopter commander with the 170th Aviation Company, 17th Aviation Group, 52nd Aviation Batalion, 1st Aviation Brigade. He and his crew were shot down two months later, on 24 March, 1970, while performing an extraction operation. Major O'Donnell's remains were never found.
November 10, 2008 7:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
. . . a gentle hero . . . .
. . . or just your average old "unlucky" grunt?
"On April 3 . . . the Third Battalion entered the town of Al Kut. It was an incursion intended to convey the point that, as Colonel McCoy described it, there were new 'alpha males' in the country." Peter Maass "Good Kills" April 20, 2003
Evnin was fatally wounded 15 minutes after the commencement of the exemplary demonstration of "alpha maleness."
November 11, 2008 5:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Don, that is beautiful. Thank you.
November 10, 2008 7:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
MJ, honest to God, I cry every time I read that poem. The tears just come, I can't help it.
November 11, 2008 9:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
and now i will. thank you. i mean it. we should cry
November 11, 2008 11:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
He was a corporal, a sniper . . . .
Definition: a marksman who shoots at people from a concealed place.
Wonder if he was one of the snipers who were "baiting" targets of opportunity.
November 10, 2008 9:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, clearly Helen... this poor kid was a shitty human being. Gee, thanks for being the voice of reason.
November 10, 2008 9:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
A sniper is an infantry specialist. Some snipers have done bad things. Therefore, it is worth considering whether this sniper did bad things.
More generally, some military personnel have done bad things. Therefore, Ellen, do you ask if each dead soldier was evil?
November 10, 2008 10:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, no. War. How deluded we all are for finding no way out of it. Surely, there is one. Doesn't seem we look hard enough for that. How is it so much easier to destroy flesh and blood and bone and the life that travels in it?
I won't dial up the slide show or the obit just yet. My vision is temporarily blurred.
Very moving, Mr. Rosenberg.
November 11, 2008 1:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ellen, cut the kid a little slack, will you please? He's dead, dead at 21. Killed by someone defending his country.
Unfortunately a majority of Americans think war is a fine thing, except when we lose, then it becomes a problem. Evnin was an American, so he fit right in. Now he's paid the price, and MJ is trying to get us to think about it a little deeper than you have done (and as you customarily do).
Try this: Don't think of Evnin as a corporal/sniper. That's not really what he was. He was the boy next door, just like every other boy, who grew slightly into a man just as he was recruited with a lot of jingoistic patriotic crap to join a perverted illegal national effort being run by criminals in Washington, and then trained by the government to be a killer. Now how much of that is the kid's fault?
As far as your aversion to sniping or baiting/sniping goes, that is only one of the many "niceties" of war. There are lots more, lots, and many of them consist of having your guts blown out of your body with an explosive device launched by someone you never see, and who doesn't see you, or causing same to someone else.
With war you get killing, mutilating, torture, rape, a lot of kids getting killed -- it's a package deal. As 714Day wrote, the war is the problem, not the people that get suckered into it.
November 11, 2008 8:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Their names are always the same, its just the faces that change.
November 10, 2008 9:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
MJ, this young man and others who died in Iraq are 4000 good reasons I can't bring myself to celebrate the "Death" of right wing talk radio. (Your previous post.)
The radio yak ebbs and flows, but the NeoCon types who whip up hate and turn people against each other for their own ends, will be waiting in the background as long as there's a thrill to be squeezed from the the cruel abuse of power or the making of an unethical buck. And you can bet they'll be ready to fan the flames on a moment's notice.
Reading Maj. O'Donnell's moving poem, it strikes me that one of the places our fallen heroes can no longer go is into the realm of helping make sure that we won't have to thank any more dead children for their sacrifice to the nation--or at least not for the dark reasons behind this war.
That vigilance is up to us now.
November 10, 2008 9:47 PM | Reply | Permalink