Sad News

I learned this morning via Kim du Toit's site that Sgt. Adam Plumondore was killed last week in Iraq.

Sgt. Adam Plumondore was the second half of the Walter-Adam Fund that Kim & Connie du Toit had created as a way to support our soldiers in Iraq. The fund provides needed equipment and some home comforts to boys a long way from home.

I never knew Adam personally, only through the Nation of Riflemen website. By all accounts that I read there, Adam loved what he did, and was quite good at it. His skills will surely be missed.

The poem below was originally written for Cecil Rhodes, a man who almost singlehandedly carved out a new country from the frontier. I think it works just as well to honor a man who helped set a country on the path to free will and self determination.

The Burial - Rudyard Kipling

When that great Kings return to clay,
Or Emperors in their pride,
Grief of a day shall fill a day,
Because its creature died.
But we -- we reckon not with those
Whom the mere Fates ordain,
This Power that wrought on us and goes
Back to the Power again.

Dreamer devout, by vision led
Beyond our guess or reach,
The travail of his spirit bred
Cities in place of speech.
So huge the all-mastering thought that drove --
So brief the term allowed --
Nations, not words, he linked to prove
His faith before the crowd.

It is his will that he look forth
Across the world he won --
The granite of the ancient North --
Great spaces washed with sun.

There shall he patient take his seat
(As when the Death he dared),
And there await a people's feet
In the paths that he prepared.

There, till the vision he foresaw
Splendid and whole arise,
And unimagined Empires draw
To council 'neath his skies,
The immense and brooding Spirit still
Shall quicken and control.
Living he was the land, and dead,
His soul shall be her soul!

Adios, Sgt. Plumondore, y Vaya con Dios. We honor you and thank you for your service.