Water convoy

   Ok, so I can't go without sharing a story about my husband. Though it was one that I hadn't heard until years later after it happened and I wonder what he'll think of me sharing it, but I'm throwing caution into the wind here;-)
   Back during my husbands first deployment in 2003 aboard a U.S. war ship after parking and off loading in the Persian Gulf to help aid the efforts to break through to Baghdad... the ship diverted to a small country.. Liberia, Africa. The Marines were sent there to help settle a civil conflict. Liberia is basically a country built upon African American freed slaves and had the option to go back to Africa. During one of the many convoys they did out in the middle of nowhere he always noticed these women with many children trailing behind them carrying old plastic jugs to fill with water everyday. On one particular day the convoy my husband was in was in fact transporting clean water from one place to another. He saw, on the side of the road waiting to cross, a mother with a handful of young children and he noticed their jugs were full with water that looked like V-8 juice. He radioed ahead asking permission to stop the convoy to give this mother and her children clean water which his Sergeant in command granted, though it held up the convoy. He stopped and hopped out and waved the women over and motioned to her he had clean water. He helped her dump out the thick yucky looking water into the sand and began filling the jugs her and the kids carried. He said she spoke to him the whole time in her native tongue and he told me all he could think of saying or doing was nodding his head and smiling while saying "yep... yea.." and her children talked a mile a minute laughing and playing and looking at all their trucks. I guess the difficult part was filling her old plastic containers with the pressurized hose attached to the truck... he worried it would blast through the bottom and the woman looked very worried when he had to allow a lot of it to spill past the sides even after he tried to reassure her it was fine. When they were finished he told her "goodbye and God bless' and she looked at him smiling from ear to ear with her white smile against that dark complexion hoisting the jug on top of her head with all the kids following suit with their smaller containers and off they went. He said he often wonders what became of them and he couldn't pass them by knowing he carried clean drinking water when theirs looked orange and murky.
I just had to share that story... it's one of my favorites!! Though like I said I didn't know about this until years after it happened. I love my husband so very much!! He is the most humble&compassionate yet strong person I know and may ever meet! I am so proud of him and all that he does to serve our Country in the U.S. Marine Corps!! There are other stories I could post, but now that I am a mom I can relate to perhaps what it might have meant to that mother on the side of that dusty road having to haul water everyday and those children having to make the same trek. Our men and women in uniform may be Warriors, but some of them have the biggest hearts!
Semper Fi