One drop of water in the ocean

In March 2009 I joined Twitter after many years of running Support Our Troops efforts on Facebook someone had sent me a YouTube link of the cast of “Red Eye” on Fox News making fun of Canadian soldiers after it was announced that in 2001 our Combat mission would be ending. I had received messages about this from families of fallen soldiers as this happened on the day when we had lost soldiers in Afghanistan .

I found the guys from the show and posted on my blog about what they had said and they made their “Forced” public apologies on air.

I started to search around twitter and found there was a huge military community on there and met some amazing people doing amazing things such as @OpGratitude, @HeroFund and others. Searching hashtags such as #RedFriday #SOT and #MilitaryMon I decided to stick around on there.

I never really paid attention to “Trending Topics” on Twitter as they are usually about games, celebrities and things that don’t really interest me however today on October 29^th, 2011 I heard the news that thirteen soldiers had been killed in Afghanistan one of which was Canadian. Instantly my heart came up in my throat as I have a lot of very close friends serving in Afghanistan at the moment and my heart was racing as I was waiting to hear the name specifically of the Canadian Soldier who had been killed.

I then logged in to Twitter and had a look at the Trending Topics list and although I am not going to repost what they were I posted the following :

13 soldiers were killed in Afghanistan today & all trending topics are about pop stars & idols - my heroes wear camo #Thankasoldier

I then noticed a lot of people began to share this and send out the post as a tribute to the thirteen soldiers that had been killed and I started to see my Twitter light up with replies and people sending along their condolences from all over the world.

About a hour later the name of the Canadian soldier was released MCpl Byron Greff from the PPCLI so I posted a photo of him and send out a condolence to his friends and family.

I noticed the retweets of this started to fly in which took me off guard as this was our 158^th soldier killed in Afghanistan and every one since I joined twitter I would send out a memorial tweet in their name but had never seen anything like this.

You see, I’ve noticed a lot of trends on twitter and mostly its “lets see if we can get this trending” kind of things or a celebrity will post a funny word and within a hour its on that list, well tonight not only for MCpl Greff but for all our fallen from all countries of the coalition in Afghanistan a difference was made.

Yesterday a friend of mine in the US ARMY posted on my Facebook wall calling me a battle buddy and said “Dave I don't know if you know this but U.S. Army soldiers always have a battle buddy someone that always stands by your side no matter what. We call them "BATTLE BUDDIES". Your every soldiers Battle Buddy. Thank You for what you do.”

These words will stick with me forever and although I may not be able to physically go to battle with our men and women in uniform I will always stand along side of them. Thank You to everyone that reposted this tonight my faith in Twitter was restored and will continue to Support Our Troops no matter what.

Although sometimes you might feel like one drop of water in the ocean you never know how one post or tweet can affect or reach people all over the world.

Thank You