[Dragaera] comments on a fallen Dragon

[Jeff]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Philip Hart" <philiph at slac.stanford.edu>
To: <dragaera at lists.dragaera.info>
Sent: Monday, January 07, 2008 12:16 PM
Subject: [Dragaera] comments on a fallen Dragon


> Last week a man I knew a little through the web was killed in Iraq.
> Andrew Olmstead was a major in the army reserves and a prolific
> blogger.  He was a big Babylon 5 fan, but I guess he wouldn't have
> minded being called a Dragon.  He had the sense of duty and honor
> of a Dragon, and the quick temper, and the searching intelligence
> of a fine officer.  From a report about his death:
>
> '"They were pursuing some insurgents," Casey's brother, Jeffrey, said.
> "Major Olmsted got out of his vehicle and was pleading with these three
> individuals to stop and surrender so that the team would not have to fire
> upon them and kill them."
>
> "Unfortunately, there were snipers in the area, and apparently that's when
> Major Olmsted was hit," Jeffrey Casey added. "He didn't want to kill these
> individuals. He was trying to save their lives."
>
> After the gunfire erupted, Thomas Casey went to help Olmsted, thinking
> that the three suspected insurgents were responsible for the shooting, his
> brother said.
>
> "That's when he took his bullet," Jeffrey Casey said. "The fact that a
> sniper round caught him in the neck . . . that's just one of those fluke
> one-in-a-million shots."'
>
>
> I happened to reread _Dragon_ a few weeks ago, and I can't get the line
> about soldiers wanting to stop the slaughter out of my head.
>
> His beautiful final post can be read here:
> http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2008/01/andy-olmsted.html
>
> In it he asks that his death not be politicized, and I ask that it not be
> here.  I thought it appropriate to note Andrew's passing in the context of
> _Dragon_, which I will never read the same way again.
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*raises his glass in salute to a fallen comrade*
jeff
-USAF Security Forces 1997-2003