 | » Tips for Teachers |  |
Sunday, December 28, 2003
Immigrants´ son sees duty on 2 fronts
By JAMES MILLER | News-Journal Staff Writer
PALM COAST — In one photograph, a smiling Mark Kes gestures with his hands toward a 2-foot-long iguana held by a Marine buddy. Behind them are the sky, the sand and the desert.
That was Iraq in spring or early summer. Now, Mark Kes is somewhere new — Afghanistan.
A Marine lance corporal, Kes is the 19-year-old son of Sophal and Chantha Kes, a couple who, in 1979, escaped their homeland of Cambodia and the genocidal Khmer Rouge movement with another son, Sophan. They shared their story with News-Journal readers May 5.
With the 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines, Mark Kes fought in Iraq, mostly in and around Nasiriya, earlier this year. In July, he came home to the United States. There were a few days with family and friends — a celebratory dinner and a cookout and volleyball at Wadsworth Park. Then, he was deployed to Afghanistan.
“He called twice, and we received a postcard from him three days ago,” Sophal Kes said last week in an interview at First Baptist Church of Palm Coast, where he pastors to a small but growing Cambodian mission. “He says, ‘I miss you guys. I hope to see you guys. It’s cold here.’”
Sophal Kes, who fought with American-backed anti-Communist troops in Cambodia, said he worries most about the possibility that his son will face guerilla fighting in an unfamiliar, treacherous landscape, like American soldiers faced during the Vietnam War.
Even so, he doesn’t worry too much, he said. “I’m a soldier, too. So I trust the Marines. I trust the service.
“We have another one, too,” he added. Mark Kes’ brother, 18-year-old Michael Kes, enlisted in the Marines earlier this year. He goes to Parris Island, S.C., for boot camp in late January.