A couple days back I got an email from a specialist serving in Iraq saying he liked The Faithful Spy and The Ghost War.  I thanked him and told him I would gladly send him free signed copies of The Silent Man and The Midnight House.

He emailed me back, told me to send the books — but that he wanted to pay for them because he deserved anything for free just for being deployed!  This guy’s a specialist on convoy duty, meaning he’s driving around Iraq risking his ass for us in 120-degree heat.  And in a later email he told me in passing he’s already been wounded from a roadside bomb.

Amazing:  In a country that’s filled with people who don’t think they have to pay their mortgages because they bought houses they can’t afford and run by CEOs who get their buddies to pay them tens of millions a year, this soldier doesn’t think he’s entitled to a free $25 book because he’s just doing his job.  We all ought to take a lesson from him.  We do not deserve these guys.

(To see more about this, including parts of our email exchange, please check out my Facebook fan page.)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 14th, 2010 at 9:23 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.