Senate confirms Neil Gorsuch to Supreme Court

[mahatmakanejeeves]

27. I'm clearing out old papers. I came across this:

It was in the Washington Post magazine for Sunday, June 18, 2006. The title on the cover was "Pfc. John Hart Didn't Have to Die."

Fatal Inaction

By April Witt
Sunday, June 18, 2006

The world's most powerful military failed to provide the armor that would have saved scores of American lives. One father wouldlike to know why

Private 1st Class John Hart whispered into the phone so he wouldn't be overheard. It was just a matter of time, he said, before his buddies and he bumped down some back road in Iraq right into an ambush. They were so exposed, the somber young soldier told his dad, back home in Bedford, Mass. They were riding around in unarmored Humvees with canvas tops and gaping openings on the sides where doors should be. That seemed pretty stupid now that people were shooting at them and lobbing rockets. John, a 20-year-old gunner whose job it was to keep his head up and return fire, felt hung out in the breeze. ... As John's father, Brian Hart, remembers the conversation, he listened with growing alarm, then stepped into his home office so his wife, Alma, wouldn't hear. It was October 11, 2003.
....

"I LOVE THIS GREEN," Brian says. He and Alma are walking hand in hand on Lexington Green. It is dusk the next evening. Brian points to the statue of John Parker, who led the town's minutemen. "I love that statue." ... "Over there is where Paul Revere rode," he says, pointing out Battle Road, which leads to Concord. John, when he was preparing for basic training, used to run that road carrying 20 pounds of books in a rucksack. ... "This is where the Revolution started," Brian says. "Forty Minutemen against 700 British. Twenty-to-one, just facing off. The farmers didn't give up."

Brian comes often to the green. He thinks about what it must have felt like to be one of those farmers. "You know you can only last so long, and then somebody's got to come and help you," he says.

Brian thinks John must have known, in his final moment, how those farmers felt. "I think courage is fighting a battle that you know you are probably going to lose," Brian says. "I think that's what John did. You realize you are going to lose that fight, but you fight it anyway."

April Witt is a staff writer for the Magazine. She and Brian Hart will be fielding questions and comments about this article Monday at noon at washingtonpost.com/liveonline.