Cassandra Mabe, assistant professor of modern foreign language and literature, is waiting for her son to return from Iraq. Matt Mabe, 23, is a West Point graduate and is a 2nd lieutenant in an engineering unit attached to the Army’s 3rd Infantry. His unit was on the front line during the first day of fighting.
Mabe is not the only one in at Loyola whose thoughts are with those fighting in Iraq.
Shortly after the war began, English Professor Paulette Swartzfager and other faculty and staff members started the Remember Web site, www.loyno.edu/~poet/remember.html, where students, faculty and staff can post the names of soldiers overseas and prayers for their safe return home.
“The list shouldn’t go away just because the war is over,” Swartzfager said. “We ought not forget that people are still over there.”
Swartzfager has offered to keep the site up and running until everyone returns home, not only from Iraq but also from all countries in which U.S. forces are deployed. In fact, since the end of heavy conflict in Iraq, more people have been added to the list than were added during the first few weeks of fighting.
According to The Times-Picayune, the President Bush’s $87 billion price tag makes this military package the most expensive postwar military and civilian effort since the plan to rebuild Europe after World War II. Experts are predicting that military personnel, such as Matt Mabe, won’t be coming home soon.
Cassandra Mabe said that although she did not have much contact with her son at the beginning of the war, a few sparse e-mails have started to arrive.
“We don’t know a lot of the details,” she said. “But we know he has been recently placed on a task force searching for and destroying confiscated weapons on the Tigris (River).”
She also said she was relieved to find out that her son’s time in Iraq hasn’t been completely consumed with dodging bullets and dismantling weapons. The history buff was able to take some time off to tour ancient Babylon and visit the courtyard where Alexander the Great is buried, she said.
