'With the Heaviest of Hearts'
Army Sgt. Sean FennertyThey bunked together off base in Anchorage, more like grad students than grunts. One by one, the war claimed their lives. The letters the soldiers left behind.
Web exclusive
By Dan Ephron
Newsweek
March 24, 2007 - Of the dozens of e-mails Army Sgt. Sean Fennerty wrote home during his three months in Iraq, the most wrenching dispatch reached his parents on Dec 12, 2006. "I write this with the heaviest of hearts," Fennerty typed into a military computer at his base in Baghdad, after attending a memorial service for two members of his airborne brigade killed in a roadside bombing. "They were two of my best friends and that was the squad I moved to, and then moved back from," he wrote. Fennerty, a 25-year-old college graduate, had a bond with the two dead soldiers, Spc. Micah Gifford and S/Sgt. Henry Linck. The three were older than most members of their unit. While stationed in Anchorage, Alaska, they rented an apartment together off base, decorated the walls with flags and memorabilia from previous postings, and lived more like grad students than grunts. All three left Anchorage for Iraq in October 2006, but kept the apartment and planned to return to it. "My two roommates dead, it's kind of hard to swallow and keep working, but that's what I'm doing. This is war and I knew full well what would happen."
Weeks later, it happened again, only this time to Fennerty: a bomb exploded under his vehicle during a patrol in Karmah near Fallujah. Three months after their deployment to Iraq, all three roommates were dead.
But their letters remain. Three months ago, NEWSWEEK began gathering letters and e-mails written home by troops killed in Iraq, hoping to learn something about the war that can't be gleaned from the daily press accounts and news analyses. Nearly a thousand families were contacted. Many wanted to know their letters would not be used to make a political statement for or against the war. Once reassured, they poured out to our reporters, forwarding e-mails, faxing handwritten letters, mailing in recordings with the voices of their loved ones. "With less than 1 percent of the U.S. population serving in the military, this project will put a name on a number," wrote Karen Meredith, whose son, First Lt. Kenneth Ballard was killed in May 2004.
The result is a special issue of NEWSWEEK next week, on newsstands Monday, almost entirely devoted to the writings of service members who lost their lives, and complementary material on our Web site, Newsweek.com, which will continue to publish soldiers' messages home in an ongoing series during the coming weeks. Strung together, the letters draw the arc of the four-year-old conflict, from the initial invasion, through the rise of the insurgency, the stabs at democracy and the spasms of civil war.
By Dan Ephron
Newsweek
March 24, 2007 - Of the dozens of e-mails Army Sgt. Sean Fennerty wrote home during his three months in Iraq, the most wrenching dispatch reached his parents on Dec 12, 2006. "I write this with the heaviest of hearts," Fennerty typed into a military computer at his base in Baghdad, after attending a memorial service for two members of his airborne brigade killed in a roadside bombing. "They were two of my best friends and that was the squad I moved to, and then moved back from," he wrote. Fennerty, a 25-year-old college graduate, had a bond with the two dead soldiers, Spc. Micah Gifford and S/Sgt. Henry Linck. The three were older than most members of their unit. While stationed in Anchorage, Alaska, they rented an apartment together off base, decorated the walls with flags and memorabilia from previous postings, and lived more like grad students than grunts. All three left Anchorage for Iraq in October 2006, but kept the apartment and planned to return to it. "My two roommates dead, it's kind of hard to swallow and keep working, but that's what I'm doing. This is war and I knew full well what would happen."
Weeks later, it happened again, only this time to Fennerty: a bomb exploded under his vehicle during a patrol in Karmah near Fallujah. Three months after their deployment to Iraq, all three roommates were dead.
But their letters remain. Three months ago, NEWSWEEK began gathering letters and e-mails written home by troops killed in Iraq, hoping to learn something about the war that can't be gleaned from the daily press accounts and news analyses. Nearly a thousand families were contacted. Many wanted to know their letters would not be used to make a political statement for or against the war. Once reassured, they poured out to our reporters, forwarding e-mails, faxing handwritten letters, mailing in recordings with the voices of their loved ones. "With less than 1 percent of the U.S. population serving in the military, this project will put a name on a number," wrote Karen Meredith, whose son, First Lt. Kenneth Ballard was killed in May 2004.
The result is a special issue of NEWSWEEK next week, on newsstands Monday, almost entirely devoted to the writings of service members who lost their lives, and complementary material on our Web site, Newsweek.com, which will continue to publish soldiers' messages home in an ongoing series during the coming weeks. Strung together, the letters draw the arc of the four-year-old conflict, from the initial invasion, through the rise of the insurgency, the stabs at democracy and the spasms of civil war.
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