Veterans Day

Taylor Mendez

Government 6th pd

11/11/17

Veterans Day

November 11, 2017

The article I chose for this assignment is from an interview CNN did with a veteran named Florent Groberg. He talks about what life is like after he witnessed his fellow comrades in the army get killed by a suicide bomber in eastern Afghanistan in early august 2012 and talks about the reason he decided to join the service.

“I’m a soldier. This is what I do”. Groberg tells a neighbor when asked why he’s going back to Afghanistan despite having already done two previous tours in Iraq. Florent had interest to join the service when he got news that his uncle Abdou was killed by Islamic extremists. What had ultimately pushed him to join the military were the awful events that took place on September 11th, 2001. At that time, he had dual citizenship in both France and the U.S so he had to wait till 2008 to join the service.

“When I made the choice to serve, I knew that death was a part of war. But nothing really prepares you for it. --- but seeing the bodies of my fellow friends hurt more than the injuries I suffered in the explosion.” Groberg says when he begins to talk about the injuries he sustained while in combat. He and his team of fellow survivors wouldn’t meet again till 2015, on the night before veteran’s day. That night one of his fellow soldiers pulled him aside to tell him how one of their friends were still having trouble talking about the experience, he didn’t end up participating in the marathon interview the next day. More than three years after the accident his army brother was still having trouble coping with the loss of his friends. Something that so many veterans deal with every day.

On November 12th,2015 Groberg received a medal of honor from president Barack Obama. He found it very comforting that all the friends and family of those soldiers that he lost on his team got to attend the ceremony at the white house that day.

The purpose of this article was to let the public get an inside of what it’s like to go fight for your country and end up losing some of the friends you consider family and what they go through for years on end.

The structure of this article is very well put together, it’s not choppy and stays on point the whole way through, they managed the interview extremely well.