"Faithfully Departed" page

Inspiration for this project:

About one week prior to our confirmed shooting date, I came across an article in The LA Times about a group of three sisters who were all in the Army. One in particular, PFC Michelle Whitmer, was stationed in Baghdad where she was killed when her Humvee was attacked. The article had mentioned the family's web site where they were keeping in contact with each other and where Michelle had written about the conditions under which she was living. The Times printed one of her letters. She talked about the simple things she missed like magazines and chocolate. She talked about the beauty of the once great palace where they were living and she talked about the people and children who stood just outside the gates looking for some charity that the troops weren't allowed to give. It brought the War in Iraq to me in a more human and personal way than I had experienced.

Now, I knew a couple of frat guys back in college who had joined the Army Reserves so they could get money for college. They couldn't stand the "one weekend a month, one month a year" schedule. I never thought of it at the time, but I began to wonder how they would have dealt with it if a War like this had come around during their service. So, I put pen to paper and began to imagine how that might go.