E-mails from Sgt. Anthony Kelly of Alpha Company

I'm not asking you to dwell on it, but there are times when these men should not be far from your mind. These selfless men stood for something, and stood to be counted when the only reward was reconciling their consciences with what their own sense of honor demanded. Their first duty was to their brothers here, and they satisfied that duty every day. That is the only truth that exists in our endeavors in Iraq. As someone who stood with them, I am grateful for having spent time in their company.

Today, we got word that our wounded are all going to make it. For that I'm grateful.

Tue, 16 Aug 2005 04:14:18

thanks to everyone for their condolences with regard to the losses suffered by my platoon and by my company. we appreciate it, a common theme in what the guys are saying around here is that we wish people could have known them like we did, so they're not just a picture in the paper or a soundbyte on tv. 

we understand that the news of our losses was taken hard back in PA. to be honest, we've been unbelievably lucky until now. in the last 2 months, we've had 31 wounded in the company with varying degrees of severity and a handful of guys have been hit twice, but up until recently no deaths.

we're dealing with this the only way we can, by going back out on our combat patrols.

Excerpt from letter sent to Ridley High School thanking them for "adopting" 2nd Platoon:
9/16/2005

We're reaching the end of our tour in Iraq. While this is still a very dangerous place to be, we'll be home shortly, though we can't say exactly when as that's still up in the air.

As you know, we're National Guardsmen. To put our deployment into perspective for you, for those of you who are now seniors, we were activated during your sophomore year and have been on duty continuously since. We had six months of train-up at Fort Bliss, Texas and Fort Polk Louisiana. We've been in the Southwest Asia Theatre of Operations (Iraq and Kuwait) since November 2004 and have been in the thick of the fighting here since Christmas '04. All of us are looking forward to coming home and to resuming our civilian lives.