A sad day for NYARNG

June 27, 2008 By Troy
Posted in Life in the Military

“The Soldier above all others prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest scars of war.” - General Douglas MacArthur

That quote is what I have at the bottom of all of my emails. I have it there for a reason, and unfortunately one of those times is now.

We have suffered a terrible loss in the New York National Guard over the last few days. On Saturday morning, three soldiers from the New York National Guard were killed along with a Lieutenant Colonel from Active Duty when their Humvee was the target of a complex ambush that involved an IED initially and then small arms and RPG fire. I have known of this the last several days, but had to stay silent until the Army has a chance to do the proper notification. This spawned my one question on Monday with COL McGrath in the Blogger’s Roundtable, when I asked how his soldiers were doing despite the significant loss of lives in his area of operation. He actually talked about this attack specifically in the interview. If you did not hear that interview session, you can click HERE and listen to it.

Anyway, one of those soldiers, SGT Rodriguez, was one of mine once. I was his First Sergeant from the time he came into the National Guard until I deployed in 2006. I remember him well, and will now remember him always. He was a hard working soldier, that did what he was told, never complained and never made a fuss. He was very quiet, but at the same time was outgoing when he needed to be. I was fortunate enough to see him while I was down at Ft. Bragg right before the 27th BCT shipped out of the US. I spent time talking to him, his fellow soldiers and some of thier leaders, all of whom used to work for me when I was their First Sergeant.

The Buffalo News has a small article in the paper today that you can read if you would like, right here; http://www.buffalonews.com/180/story/377814.html, http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregion/story/378762.html or http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2008/06/revere_soldier_killed_in_afghanistan_ambush.html

The other two NY National Guardsmen has stories written about them also

SGT Seabrooks

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/ny-lisold0626,0,3803486.story

SPC Mangano

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-limang0626,0,6372114.story