THE MAN BEHIND THE CORPSE
I somehow overlooked the best story in Sunday's LAT Magazine, Candice Reed's short and moving remembrance of one of the contractors ambushed and killed in Fallujah:
Scott Helvenston's chiseled movie-star face flashes through my mind whenever I run on the beach. It's mainly because of him that I stay in shape.
Every morning before I head out on my run, I read the paper. Early this month, I stared at the photograph of the charred bodies dangling from a bridge over the Euphrates River. Thank God that isn't anyone I know, I thought selfishly, and turned the page. Two days later my friend Ciaran e-mailed me.
She forwarded the story of the four civilians working for a private company, Blackwater Security Consulting, who were killed by rocket-propelled grenades during an ambush. I read the article, and pieces of it sunk in—Scott had gone to Iraq to work for the contractor to the U.S. government charged with protecting the delivery of food in Fallouja, and to make a large amount of money in a short amount of time for his two children. It couldn't be the same man—but, of course, it could.
"Isn't this your Navy SEAL?" Ciaran asked.
I stared at the name—Scott Helvenston—and remembered the grisly photo. Suddenly I felt sick. Then I burst into tears. It was definitely my Navy SEAL.
Read it all. My thanks to LA Observed, which I rely on when I don't see the LAT--and need even when I do.