Soldier's last words: 'I'm coming home'

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=10458483&BRD=1286&PAG=461&dept_id=432137&rfi=6

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - Ernie Bucklew was headed home from Iraq for a family funeral. Now the Bucklew family will have a double funeral.

Army Sgt. Ernest G. Bucklew, 33, of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, based here at Fort Carson, was one of the 16 U.S. soldiers killed Sunday when guerrillas shot down an Army helicopter ferrying troops to Baghdad - the most lethal single attack on U.S. troops since the Iraq war began in March.
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Like most of the casualties, Army officials said, Bucklew was heading home for leave when the big Chinook helicopter was downed. He had grabbed a seat on Sunday's flight, Army officials said, after receiving a message from the Red Cross that his mother had died of an aneurysm at home in Enon Valley, Pa., near the Lawrence County border. The family decided to delay the funeral for Mary Ellen Bucklew, 57, until Ernie could get home.

The sergeant's wife, Barbara, and their two sons, 8 and 4, were to travel from their home on the Fort Carson base to meet him and attend the funeral. Family members said yesterday that Bucklew and his mother will now be buried together. "It's going to be a double service. They are going to have it all at one time," said Jack D. Smith Jr., the soldier's cousin. "It'll be later in the week, depending on how fast they can get the body home."

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"His last words were, 'I'm coming home,' " Smith added. "He said, 'I'm not worried because my mom's up there watching over me."'


In one of the last e-mails sent to his wife, Bucklew reminisced about times with his mother, Mary, when he was a child.


"He said he couldn't sleep. He was thinking about her," Barbara Bucklew said. "He couldn't wait to be home."

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Sleep well.

n/t

Silence sez it all.

about these deaths and these sad stories so I guess we say nothing, send sympathy, and listen to bush tell us how great all is.

</sarcasm> Actually they died for ther stock holders of Halliburton and the owners of the Caryle group and Bechtel.

very sad indeed

"If a helicopter were hit an hour later, after he came out and spoke, should he come out again?" Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, told The Times's Elisabeth Bumiller, explaining Mr. Bush's silence after the Chinook crash. The public, he added, "wants the commander in chief to have proper perspective, and keep his eye on the big picture and the ball."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/06/opinion/06DOWD.html
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Let us all, then, follow the example of our president. Let us keep our eye on the big picture, because these little pictures are so disturbing and distracting. And the big picture here is that... Hm. We got into a war of choice based on lies, that had nothing to do with the fight against al Qaeda, that indeed seems to have been a recruiting bonanza for al Qaeda, which is now thriving in Iraq, and a bonanza for administration cronies who are profiteering from it so handsomely that the GOP maneuvered to remove anti-profiteering language from the $87B appropriation bill....

Hm.

Maybe there's something nice in the middle picture. Let's go look there. I don't read the papers anyway; I let my staff do that.

Bush NOT attending funerals and the ban on showing our lost sons and daughters coming home draped with a flag.

My heart goes out to the family.