cpl jordan pierson

An Empty Space

Charlie Company Marine's Death Leaves His Family Reaching For Meaning
By JESSE HAMILTON Courant Staff Writer August 29 2006 MILFORD -- The photos on the coffee table are like puzzle pieces, a thick stack of 4-by-6-inch hints about the Jordan Pierson his family couldn't know.There's one that shows the street that runs past the main cemetery in Fallujah, Iraq. Next, the view from the rooftop guard post on the edge of the compound where Cpl. Pierson was becoming a battle-hardened Marine. And dozens more, freezing the dusty faces of Plainville's Charlie Company against the monochromatic backdrop of Fallujah.Somewhere within these images is the man and boy his family knew, whose body is expected to arrive today on U.S. soil, a middle step in Pierson's long journey home.In the living room of his family's house in Milford, the wiry corporal's dress uniform hangs from a door. It had awaited his return, maybe in late October, just in time to attend his unit's Marine Corps ball. He had asked that it be ready for him, just as he had been planning his University of Connecticut class load. Pierson, 21, was looking to get his life together after seven months at war.On Friday, the news that he had been shot to death on a foot patrol in Fallujah broke this home open like an ant hill, leaving his family still hurrying purposelessly from room to room on Sunday, powerless to repair the breach.There is food to eat - so much that neighbors are making space in their refrigerators. People keep bringing it, their offering for the impenetrable grief that is settling in. Aunts, friends, his mother and grandmother sit around the dining table exercising their memories, stamping their versions of Jordan's unruly youth into the family record..........

and from 1st sgt grainger; Saddened hearts

Saddened hearts
Sunday, Aug. 27 -- It’s with a saddened heart that I returned to Charlie Company last night as we have lost a great Marine to the rigors of combat in Iraq: Cpl Jordan Pierson. Cpl Pierson had been a bright spot in his platoon, in a place that can take the softest of hearts into a void of darkness. Even when the gloom of combat reached deep in a man's soul, Cpl Pierson could bring the Marine back to a sense of purpose, a sense of why we were here, and that we were making a difference. Cpl Pierson was destined not to only be a Marine, but a leader among Marines. He fostered a sense of caring for Marines while still embodying all it meant to be a Marine. .......