COLUMBUS, Ohio — The woman knelt and read the message that someone had written on the dog tag that peeked from the top of the scuffed boot: This country owes you a world of debt.
She picked up another tag, this one hanging from the laces: Not forgotten. Still protecting us from above.
Still another, this one the simplest of the 14 messages, each one in a different hand: God bless.
Had she reached deep inside the combat boot that had once belonged to 21-year-old Lance Cpl. Aaron H. Reed, had she run her hand across the worn insole, she would have come away with grit on her fingertips — sand from the desert of the country that made sure Ohio claimed an unsettling and unwanted place in the history of the Iraq war.
During a months-long deployment in 2005, Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment — a reserve unit from Columbus — lost 23 Marines and a Navy corpsman, including 11 members of the company's 3rd Platoon who died in a single explosion on one terrible August day. And still, even in the year of the 10th anniversary of what was among the largest losses for a single company in the war, the "Eyes of Freedom" traveling memorial that honors them remained a gut punch for Amy Peyton.
After she had studied the life-size paintings depicting each man lost, after she had flipped through the dog tags that visitors personalize and drop into the men's boots, after she had read the letter that Lance Cpl. Wesley Davids, who died on his 20th birthday, had left behind for his mother, Peyton could no longer hold it together.
She had been wandering the Ohio Statehouse, looking for something to pass the time during a break from a health care conference last week when she happened across the Lima Company memorial in the rotunda. And she just couldn't stop her tears.
"They're babies. They were all somebody's baby," said Peyton, of North Canton, who has an 8-month-old son. "You look at these paintings, you look into these boys' eyes, and you feel the love and the loss. It's overpowering."
"The Eyes of Freedom: Lima Company Memorial" was on display at the Ohio Statehouse from Feb. 9-22.
Photo Credit: Chris Russell/AP
The paintings by central Ohio artist Anita Miller were unveiled in 2008. (Miller later added a smaller portrait honoring three others, including Sgt. Bradley Harper of Ohio, who were part of the 4th Assault Amphibian Battalion that was attached to Lima Company and who also died in the Aug. 3, 2005, attack.)
The paintings were meant to honor the men's spirit, to capture the essence of their souls. The memorial was meant to be a somber reflection, but it has become so much more, said Mike Strahle.
He is a former Lima Company Marine who was badly wounded — and saw six of his comrades die — when his vehicle hit an explosive device in May of that bloody year. Strahle is now director of the exhibit.
Over the years, the memorial has made more than 140 stops across the country. Whenever they can, friends and families and brothers and sisters of the Lima Company men still visit. And they still weep. But something has changed, Strahle said. Those who knew the Marines and those who didn't can smile a little now if they take time to soak in a feeling of gratitude and hope.
There are crayon drawings kids have left for the men they label heroes. There's a letter from the widow of anAir Force veteran that reads simply: Thank you so much for loving America. There's a note: Thank you for my children's freedoms.
Blacklick Elementary School fourth grader Alex Andersen on Feb. 11 reads a note placed in the boot of a Lima Company Marine killed in action in Iraq in 2005.
Photo Credit: Chris Russell/AP
If people look around and notice the love among the loss, they can sense the healing that is taking place, Strahle said. "The saying goes that time heals all wounds, but if you've lost someone in this way, that's not always the case. Sometimes, it takes more than just time."
Steve Osborne, a former Army sergeant and infantryman, is proof. The 30-year-old from the East Side served three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. When he came home, he admits, he was unrecognizable from the fresh-faced kid who had left six years before.
He was tormented, he said, angry and depressed and unable to adjust to civilian life. So he drank too much and yelled too much and kept all his pain locked inside.
When he married five years ago, his wife had no idea what to do when the flashbacks came. She cowered in their bedroom, afraid. Somehow, they both knew, he was going to have to get help.
Little by little, he did. It has not been easy. But ask him what has been the most healing salve and he nods toward the paintings.
"This," he said, turning away to get himself together. "This."
He had been friends with Lance Cpl. Davids; they had played trumpet together in the Dublin Scioto High School marching band. And when Davids died in Iraq, Osborne was in Germany. While shining his boots at the end of a long day, he checked his emails. His mother had sent him the news.
"I just kept shining my boots. All night. I shined my boots for hours," he said. "It was just . you know."
But most people don't know.
And that's why Osborne likes to tell them. He has been volunteering with the Lima Company memorial for a couple of years. The first time he saw the exhibit, his wife had made him go. They went to the Franklin County Courthouse during the last five minutes the exhibit was open on the last day it was in town.
When it returned to Columbus, he went back. And he stayed a little longer. He talked to Strahle. He talked to some other veterans who came by to see it.
And he visited again. And he talked to more veterans. And again. And again. Now, he is doing much better. He is happier. This is a haven, a chance for him to be around what he knows and loves, to swap stories with people who come in, to lean on them, to hope.
"I look at the men in the paintings, and I feel like I know them," he said. "But I look at them and I realize each of them has something in common with me and with every other veteran out there. They're everyman."
The "Eyes of Freedom" Lima Company memorial can be seen at the Ohio Statehouse through Sunday, Feb. 22.
