(Elaine Kagan’s article ran in the L.A. Times, 5/23.)
Bruce Knight, a ground surveillance operator with the U.S. Army Airborne Rangers for more than four years, fingers the chain out from under his T-shirt and eight dog tags clatter against his chest. "Maybe I'll write about them," he says, clutching the tags in his hand. Knight wants to write about what went down in Somalia. He wants to write about being shot in the back by a sniper in Panama. He wants to write about what he doesn't discuss with his wife and sons. Tall and broad-shouldered with a perfectly clipped black-and-white haircut, Knight, 42, is an intense, formidable man. "I'll write the truth," he says, cool eyes narrowing, "the way it really was." Kayla Rogers may write about Slippery Rock, Pa., where she grew up with her grandma and grandpa. Slippery Rock is where, two weeks before 9/11, Kayla joined the U.S. Marine Corps at 17 as a junior in high school. She could write about being on the last flight of Marines into Kuwait City when the U.S. bombed Baghdad in 2003, or how she was the only woman in her company of 200 because the only other woman "freaked when she saw her first dead body and was sent home."
via www.latimes.com
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