Hero’s survivors rue war: Mom says son ill-equipped:

By Maggie Mulvihill
Friday, November 11, 2005 - Updated: 03:14 AM EST

Alma Hart stood over her only son’s grave at Arlington National Cemetery in November 2003, vowing to honor his life.

Pfc. John Hart was just 20 when he was shot dead by an Iraqi enemy – just three months after his arrival in Iraq.

“When we buried John I promised him I would think of him every day,” said Hart yesterday, her voice breaking. “And I have.”

Today, as another Veterans Day passes, Alma Hart, 47, her husband, Brian, 46, and their two teenage daughters will lay a wreath in John’s memory at Memorial Park near their Bedford home. John Hart was one of 31 Massachusetts soldiers killed in the war so far.

But helping the living is what helps his mother make sense of her child’s death. She has begun volunteering at Bedford’s Veterans Administration hospital, determined to make sure the soldiers there aren’t ignored like many who returned from Vietnam.

“I will not let this happen to the Iraq generation. We can’t just stuff them in a hospital and leave them there,” Hart said. “This is how I will honor my son. I just can’t sit around and stare at John’s picture. There are guys that still need me.”

John Hart was killed as he traveled with fellow soldiers in a canvas-covered Humvee in Northern Iraq. In a phone call home a week before his death, he told his father he lacked body armor and ammunition.

“He said, ‘Dad can you do something?’ ” Hart remembered. Alma Hart said she and her husband were stunned, though they had heard news reports of ill-equipped soldiers.

“We were hoping it wasn’t true. President Bush had announced the war was over in May and I thought they were just there on peacekeeping stuff,” Hart said.

By the time the couple decided to write a letter to Massachusetts congressmen, “the Army was ringing the doorbell to say John was killed,” Hart said.

“They sent him into an ambush where there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell he was going to survive,” she said. [continue]

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Activist says leaders without family in Iraq lack personal stake:

Peace activist Cindy Sheehan told University of Massachusetts students in a Veteran's Day speech Friday that government officials who don't have family serving in the Iraq war "have nothing at stake."

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