Prayers For Alex

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
New York Daily News
June 14, 2008
Pg. 18
‘Give me a sign,’ Qns. ma pleads to G.I. son gone missing in Iraq
By Stephanie Gaskell, Daily News Staff Writer
EVERY NIGHT, Maria del Rosario Duran sleeps with her cell phone under her pillow, hoping for some news.
It has been a little more than a year since her son, Sgt. Alex Jimenez, was captured in Iraq, and the Queens mom believes he may still be alive.
“When I go to sleep at night, I talk to him. I say, ‘Alex, I want to see you. Please give me a dream. Give me a sign. Give me something,’ ” Duran said.
Jimenez was taken prisoner along with Pfc. Byron Fouty, 20, and Pfc. Joseph Anzack, 21, on May 12, 2007, after insurgents attacked their convoy, killing five other soldiers.
Anzack’s body was later found in the Euphrates River.
That month was the deadliest for the New York-based 10th Mountain Division since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began.
This one has been almost as bad.
Five soldiers from the unit have been killed already in June.
“It’s tough,” said Lt. Col. Richard Greene, commander of the 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, which was ambushed in Yusafiyah, a small town south of Baghdad, in May 2007.
“You never get used to hearing reports of casualties and fatalities,” he said.
The latest casualties join the list of 157 other soldiers from the Fort Drum-based 10thMountain Division who have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
News of the recent deaths brought more pain and anguish for Duran.
“I still think he’s alive,” Duran told the Daily News at her home in Corona, Queens.
Every day she searches for clues about her son’s whereabouts on the Internet and stays in touch with Army officials.
She said she has met with psychics who have told her that Jimenez is still alive, perhaps in an underground tunnel somewhere.
“Faith and hope — that’s all I have,” she said.
Duran and her family, including her two other sons, are greeted in their neighborhood nearly every day by people asking, “Have you heard anything?”
“Not yet,” she tells them. “Keep praying.”
The family celebrated Jimenez’s 26th birthday on April 4. They held a Mass at their home and “prayed a lot.”
“Maybe he will come home,” Duran said. “It’s possible.”
Until then, the Army said it will continue to search for the two men.
“Every day there are hundreds, if not thousands of soldiers searching for them,” Greene said. “We’re hopeful that we’ll find them and that we’ll find them in good condition and bring them home safe and sound.”
 
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