| For 20 Ohio Marines [A Tribute from Butler, Pa.] by Charles L. Cingolani Did you feel the wave of sympathy surging across the Pennsylvania line and out to you, the families left behind? Oh, how we know— for your boys were here among ours, in our streets jogging, in cars, in shopping malls, in our churches, at picnics, and High School proms, and not too long ago on the Fourth of July as eager boys on Main Street watching soldiers passing by. Even then they'd straighten when the flag would catch their eye. We watched them at gates embracing you, parents wives and families, grandparents too and young girls who couldn't break loose, watched them turn to leave with head held high, then at the ramp look back— one last fleeting glance. Today, twenty, they reported, have fallen— snatched from us, our treasure plundered lifeless on foreign clay. Numb now we sit with you and weep mingle our tears with yours in grief. ° A Portrait Tribute |
| 14 Marine reservists from the Cleveland area were killed in the first week of August 2005 by a roadside bomb -- one of the heaviest blows suffered by a single unit in the war. Two days earlier, six others from the same battalion were killed in combat. |
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