FOG OF WAR

Asking about the mission matters.

Getty / ATTA KENARE / Contributor

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Hey y’all, welcome back to Unfit to Print.

There will be no newsletter on Thursday this week as I’m headed to Florida to teach some young people about journalism, but stay tuned for video monologues on Substack and YouTube.

Today, a reflection on the first full week of the war with Iran.

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FOG OF WAR

For the past week, I have been thinking a lot about Marine Staff Sergeant Charles Cartwright.

SSgt. Cartwright grew up just fifteen minutes from my hometown in Maryland, and we attended the same high school. But I never knew him. He graduated in the spring of 2001, when I was still in elementary school.

I learned his name nine years later, when one of my high school teachers pinned his photo to our classroom wall. She explained, through tears, that he had died defending our country.

Cartwright joined the Marines just a couple of days before our world was turned upside down by the 9/11 terror attacks.

I remember my mom picking me up from school that day and telling me, on the drive home, that “something bad happened.” Looking back, I wonder what Cartwright was thinking as he watched the planes crash into the Twin Towers.

Whatever was running through Cartwright’s mind that day, the years that followed would be defined by service.

Cartwright completed three tours of duty in Iraq and two in Afghanistan. During his fifth deployment — and second to Afghanistan — Cartwright and his unit came under heavy fire. He killed two enemy combatants before being shot in the chest. He ignored the wound, putting himself again in the line of fire to save a severely wounded Afghan soldier who was assisting his unit. Cartwright refused treatment until the threat was neutralized in order to protect his men.

He was 26 years old and left behind a wife he had married just 11 months prior.

His military decorations included a posthumous Silver Star, two Purple Hearts, two Combat Action Ribbons, and three Good Conduct Medals.

Cartwright was part of the generation that answered the call after 9/11. Now I am five years older than he was when he died, sitting at a news desk covering a new war and thinking about what this country asks of the young people sent to fight it. All I can do from here is try to ask the right questions.