10/17/2026
Oh Josh we miss you bro.
20 years later and it still hurts like yesterday. We were about 20 miles away patrolling some nasty IED & death infested wasteland. Josh was very special to me & we were instantly close friends from the moment we met at The Citadel. He was put on this planet to be a Marine, it's literally all he ever wanted to do.
He was an extraordinary human being, Josh was strong, intelligent, compassionate & a wonderful Man & Marine Corps Officer.
He accomplished his dream goal of becoming a Marine Infantry Officer & his Marines adored him. Josh was a rare natural born leader, he put the welfare of his Marines first & skillfully, from their very first week in country, he successfully led them through incredibly ferocious battles IVO Haditha.
Back in 2006, Haditha was an angry bloody hostile hive of merciless LN & foreign fighter extremists engaged in ruthless & relentless kinetic combat operations. It was the height of the Iraq War, every single day every maneuver element was in contact, coalition forces suffered casualties daily. It was a dark time, roads were packed with IED's, there were SVEST, SVBIED, IDF, SAF, ambush attacks, sectarian atrocities at near genocidal scale, abductions & executions of Iraqi Police Officers and Iraqi Army & government officials.
The Iraq war was really a civil war. It was Sunni versus Shia & we young Americans were dead center in the middle of it all.
Both sides of the insurgency had foreign fighters pouring in, young men, most commonly poor & illiterate hailing from desolate nations, victims in many ways themselves inspired by deeply seductive & malicious extremist internet propaganda. These young Men arriving to fight & kill infidels as righteous warriors of God, were all nearly identical in age as we were.
All of us were deceived.
We, by the mixed spell of powerful, politically vacuous sycophantic competing special interests obsessed with expansion of power & regional influence accompanied by the insatiable hunger of good ole fashioned unrestricted & parasitical war racketeering gorging in a ravenous feeding frenzy of unprecedented economic opportunities which only war could provide.
Our opponents arrived in scores, unforgivably decieved by warlord gangsters masquerading as heroic embattled prophets promising these young desperate Men both divine purpose & paradisiacal rewards which only holy martyrdom could provide.
All of us were deceived yet all of us fought and we produced carnage upon that bit of white hot ancient burning Earth, each other & every living creature in between.
Tragedy, was everywhere as the constant unwelcomed companion to us all & no matter who you were, what language you spoke, where you hailed from, whatever you believed in or didn't believe, or from what you saw or did there began to believe or lost or self scrutinized faith itself...if you were on the ground, I know now that we were all of us, every single human life there during that time and place were victims of something.
Back then though, we were all warriors.
We had our heroes, Josh is one of mine. Josh was a hero to me and to many.
"Not iron, trust me, the heart within my breast I am all compassion" -Homer, The Iliad.
2nd Lieutenant Joshua Loren Booth, 0302, USMC, of Fiskdale, MA.
Killed In Action on 17OCT06, Haditha, IZ, OIF.
Infantry Platoon Commander, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines.
Leader of Men, Ring Bearer, Citadel Class of 2005, Charlie Company.
As Father, Son, Husband, Marine & our beloved friend he was both fine & proficient. Proper do we honor you today brother in memory for a life well lived.
We miss you bro, go easy.
Semper Fidelis.
❤️-E🇺🇸
