Guardsman: New Orleans duty worse than Iraq

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-- Guardsman: New Orleans duty worse than Iraq

Posted by DaveSZ on Dec-11-2005 10:35:

Guardsman: New Orleans duty worse than Iraq

http://www.carmelpinecone.com/051209-1.html

quote:

�The humanitarian stuff � those are the reasons I joined the Guard,� said Hanson, who signed up in 1998 and spent more than a year in southern Iraq, returning in March. �I saw every emotion, from one end of scale to the other. Some were shocked and asked, �What do we do now?� All I could do was give them food and water, and say they were going to be OK.�

But even as they helped, they encountered the racism prevalent in the South. Locals freely used �the n-word� and addressed the African Americans in Hanson�s platoon as �Boy.�

And while they were working near St. Rita�s Nursing Home, where 35 people died during the hurricane, three badly decomposed bodies were found.

�The mission affected me more, emotionally, than my whole trip to Iraq � as a parent, as a citizen of the United States, as a taxpayer, and as a soldier and a guardsman,� he said. �I�ll never go back to New Orleans, or Louisiana. Not unless I have to.�

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