I started work this morning, only to learn that three more Kiwi soldiers have been killed in Bamiyan Province when the last vehicle in a convoy was hit by an improvised explosive device in Bamiyan, north west of Do Abe on the road to Romero about 9.20am on Sunday (Afghanistan time).  The remaining personnel in the patrol secured the location and awaited additional support. A second bomb was found and defused.

Many people are sharing a quote from US Army Major John Hottell, who was killed in Vietnam…it sounded familiar and I found a Time article that concludes with that quote:

…you have five in a row from the class of ’64. One belongs to John Hottell III – a Rhodes scholar, twice a recipient of the Silver Star – who was killed in 1970. The year before, he had written his own obituary and sent it in a sealed envelope to his wife. “I deny that I died for anything – not my country, not my Army, not my fellow man,” he wrote. “I lived for these things, and the manner in which I chose to do it involved the very real chance that I would die…my love for West Point and the Army was great enough…for me to accept this possibility as a part of a price which must be paid for things of great value.

Some day I might copy the whole article in here but that’s not appropriate today…in getting my head around these losses in Bamiyan, I did come across the site from which I borrowed the image above…the author talks about memories of ANZAC Day and the simple act of placing an RSA poppy on the cenotaph, one of the many scattered across this nation, reminders of those who did not come back from the nation’s struggles…