Someone You Should Know tonight featured two stories, both related to the blogosphere in some way. The first story we featured was about Sgt. 1st Class James D. Priestap. James was the brother-in-law of Wizbang blogger Kim Priestrap. We shared a beautiful tribute Kim wrote. Here is a tribute from someone who served under James,
In memory of SFC James Priestap (my platoon sgt.). Killed by a sniper at Checkpoint 17 while distributing food and water to the Iraqi Police. Moments before his death, he was smiling and giving candy to the kids in the area. He was a man with a wife and 2 kids, ages 11 and 9. I had to help load his body in the backseat of my humvee and then loaded him onto the MEDEVAC helicopter. I had in my posession a camo pattern angel that i carried for my own good luck charm. Before we got him on the helicopter, i placed the angel on his body and said a prayer to help him on his way to Heaven. He will now be living in eternal happines and we all have another guardian angel watching over us. The expression on his face is something that is forever burned into my memory and i’ll never forget it. It was most certainly a life altering experience and I now have a whole different outlook on life in general. This man was one of the greatest leaders in our company. He had a huge heart and he would do absolutely anything for his soldiers that were under his command. This incident may have dented our morale here, but we will NOT stand down and we will NOT back away. We will be back out at Checkpoint 17 soon and those motherfuckers better be ready to die. They may think they’ve had a victory on thanksgiving day but they haven’t seen the wrath of my squad and the sheer anger we now have growing inside us all. After we took SFC Priestap’s weapon we divided up the rounds in the magazine to everyone in the squad. The first round in the chamber of our M4 rifles is one of his tracer rounds and it will be the first round out of the barrel in his name. He will not have died in vain.
Gregg told us the personal story of a man many of you have seen, Chief Master Sergent John Gebhardt. Where have you seen him?
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