Kim Henderson - Remembering a fallen Marine

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, May 27th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Here’s World commentator Kim Henderson on when sacrifice gets personal.

KIM HENDERSON, COMMENTATOR: You may have missed it back in 2016, with headlines that week focused on an attack in Brussels and the take down of a senior ISIS leader. All things considered, I suppose the death of a Marine in a place where we weren’t even officially engaged in combat doesn’t get too much attention. But with Memorial Day in mind, I would like to tell you a bit about Louis F. Cardin, a young American who died in a rocket attack in Iraq five years ago. He was 27, and he sustained fatal injuries while hustling his Marines to a bunker.

Back home in California, Cardin was known as “Louie,” the second-youngest of eight siblings, a military-minded guy who joined the Marines just two days after high school graduation. So while his former classmates moved into dorms that fall, Louie moved into a different mold—that of a field artilleryman. He was following in the footsteps of his two grandfathers and an older brother, Vincent. Before the funeral, Vincent told reporters that he and Louie had been messaging via Facebook about getting their mother a ring for her birthday, one containing all the siblings’ birthstones.

Mary Pat, mother of the Cardin brood, waved away condolences following Louis’ death. She preferred instead to speak of her years with him as a gift. President Obama publicly acknowledged her son’s death during his visit to Cuba, but she said her Louie would have wanted attention directed instead toward his fellow Marines. That’s why the two care packages Mary Pat was preparing to send to her son—the ones filled with desert essentials like baby wipes and over-the-calf socks—were sent to other recipients. “That’s what he’d want,” she told The Press Enterprise, a Riverside County, California, newspaper.

James Heygster, a retired Marine who served with Cardin during two tours in Afghanistan, said you couldn’t be in a bad mood around him. Others said Staff Sergeant Cardin chose to remain in the barracks among his buddies long after he was eligible to live off-base. Couples in need of a date night could count on Louie to babysit, too.

That doesn’t surprise Cardin’s mother. She says it was because of his friends that Louie kept reenlisting. His years in uniform involved lots of sandy service, including four tours of duty. At the time of his death, the young Marine was in the sand again on his fifth. His unit had been in Iraq for about a week.

According to the Stars and Stripes, Cardin was the recipient of the Presidential Unit Citation, three Afghanistan Campaign medals, an Iraq Campaign Medal, and three Sea Service Deployment ribbons.

Again, with all things considered, I suppose the death of one Marine way over in Iraq shouldn’t register very high on the headline-making scale. Nope, not very high at all—unless that fallen Marine’s truck just happened to be parked next to where your son’s Silverado sat at Camp Lejeune. Then, it rates about a 10.

I’m Kim Henderson.

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