Care packages sent to Marines in Afghanistan
usually contain candy bars, magazines, chewing tobacco and the like. But
the item Cpl. Charly Mabry received after a helicopter dropped him into
Marjah for a massive assault on the Taliban was not typical.
It was a flag, one that had covered the coffin of a veteran from a war long past.
In a post on a Web site chat room, Mabry, 25, of Dewey, Ariz., had said he wanted to show appreciation to those who sent parcels—suggesting he'd take pictures of Marines with U.S. flags while on deployment and send them back as thanks.
Learning of the idea, Donna Wirth of Mesa, Ariz., thought of her father, Donald Keller, who served in the Guadalcanal campaign in the Pacific during World War II. Wirth decided to send the flag that had draped his coffin to Mabry, and to a new generation of Marines. The idea: Take pictures of the flag on operations in Afghanistan, then bring it back home.
Wirth said she and her siblings could think of no more meaningful use of the flag.
"If it gets soiled or rained on, or any other mishap befalls it, please leave it that way. We want to receive it with the evidence intact that it was used in the pictures and held by the men in the various places it goes. We want it covered with the dust from the country," she said.
So Mabry—a combat cameraman who documents operations for the military—folded the flag into a triangle and started taking it out on patrol. It doesn't fit inside his pack so he taped a towel around it for a bit of protection and strapped it onto the side of his pack. He's photographed it in poppy fields and on long patrols, with battalion commanders and with bomb-sniffing dogs.
It was a flag, one that had covered the coffin of a veteran from a war long past.
In a post on a Web site chat room, Mabry, 25, of Dewey, Ariz., had said he wanted to show appreciation to those who sent parcels—suggesting he'd take pictures of Marines with U.S. flags while on deployment and send them back as thanks.
Learning of the idea, Donna Wirth of Mesa, Ariz., thought of her father, Donald Keller, who served in the Guadalcanal campaign in the Pacific during World War II. Wirth decided to send the flag that had draped his coffin to Mabry, and to a new generation of Marines. The idea: Take pictures of the flag on operations in Afghanistan, then bring it back home.
Wirth said she and her siblings could think of no more meaningful use of the flag.
"If it gets soiled or rained on, or any other mishap befalls it, please leave it that way. We want to receive it with the evidence intact that it was used in the pictures and held by the men in the various places it goes. We want it covered with the dust from the country," she said.
So Mabry—a combat cameraman who documents operations for the military—folded the flag into a triangle and started taking it out on patrol. It doesn't fit inside his pack so he taped a towel around it for a bit of protection and strapped it onto the side of his pack. He's photographed it in poppy fields and on long patrols, with battalion commanders and with bomb-sniffing dogs.
Vogt
In a strange country, amid gunfire, a sense of history and connection to earlier wars inspires Mabry and others in the 1st Battalion, 6th Marine regiment.
"This flag buried a World War II veteran who believed in the same thing we believe in now," Mabry says.
The cotton flag has started to get dusty, but despite the instructions, Mabry tries to protect it. He seldom unfurls the flag for photos, instead handing fellow Marines a tightly folded triangle that shows only the blue background and white stars. Sometimes he leaves it behind—when they might have to wade through chest-high water or he knows they're going into a firefight.
David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
Creative Writer
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