Member-only story
How To Make Life More Beautiful
Three Iraqi kids walked parallel to our line of armored vehicles about thirty yards away. Pillars of black smoke rose from the city in the distance and leaned diagonally across the indigo sky. The occasional echoes of gunfire and the swooshing chops of helicopter rotors swirled through the hot afternoon air and dissipated into the quiet desert behind us.
Thousands of other U.S. Marines and I were on the outskirts of Baghdad preparing to enter the city during the initial phases of the Iraq War in 2003.
The oldest of the three kids, a girl who looked to be about ten, held tightly to the hand of her younger brother. She glanced at me through the corner of her eye, her head tilted in apprehension.
I couldn’t imagine what she thought of all this.
I smiled at her.
She quickly looked away, then a few seconds later she looked back.
I pulled some candy and other food out of my pack and held it out.
“Would you like this?” I asked. She didn’t know what I was saying in words but my gesture made it clear. I could see her eyes brighten at the sight of the colorful candy wrapper.
She stopped walking.
