A higher calling than duty
"WHY I joined: The question has been asked of me so many times in so many different contexts that I thought it would be best if I wrote my reasons for joining the Army on my page for all to see."
Oct. 29, 2006. On the night before he deployed to Iraq, Army 2nd Lt. Mark Jennings Daily sat down at his laptop in his Texas apartment and began tapping out an essay for his MySpace Web page. Daily, a 23-year-old Irvine native who considered himself a liberal humanist, had decided to join the fight despite initial doubts about the war.
Before shipping out, he wanted to explain why.
The decision had befuddled some. After all, Daily was a UCLA political science graduate with a wide circle of friends and dreams of becoming a senator, or a history professor, or a foreign correspondent. Why join the Army?
His essay would turn out to be a last testament to one soldier's courage and convictions.
And that essay, in recent weeks, has ricocheted throughout the Internet, taking on a life of its own. It was read on the U.S. Senate floor and posted on the websites of columnists and talk show hosts. It has prompted hundreds of letters from strangers. Daily's words, his astonished parents say, seemed to resonate with all kinds of folks, stirring a common altruistic impulse.
He wrote it in just 20 minutes, his parents say, as he chatted with his family in his packed-up El Paso apartment near Ft. Bliss, Texas, where he was assigned to the 2nd Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division.
"First, the more accurate question is why I volunteered to go to Iraq. After all, I joined the Army a week after we declared war on Saddam's government with the intention of going
Daily's parents, John and Linda Daily of Irvine, didn't particularly want to see their eldest son ship out to Iraq. They would never tell him that directly. They respected their children too much to try to interfere.
"If not me, then who?" Linda Daily remembers her son asking, his earnest eyes leaving her with no good answer.
So the Dailys did what they believed parents should do: They embraced their son, affirmed his decision and sent him off, shielding as best they could their fears and doubts. His wife of just three months, Janet, did the same.
"Anyone who knew me before I joined knows that I am quite aware and at times sympathetic to the arguments against the war in Iraq. If you think the only way a person could bring themselves to volunteer for this war is through sheer desperation or blind obedience then consider me the exception."
