Paul (Michael P.) Bridges laid to rest

HUNTSVILLE -- Even though the war in Iraq was raging, Paul Bridges wanted to join the Army.

He couldn't have done what he did unless he really, really wanted to be a soldier.

"After I took him to the recruiting station during Christmas break 2001, he told me, 'Dad, I'm a lot shorter and fatter than I thought I was,'" said his father, Terry Bridges. "At 5-foot-11 and 296 pounds, he was too heavy to join the Army."

Paul Bridges began walking to his job at Donatos Pizza. He started watching what he ate. He worked out.

A year and a half later, the 2001 Bob Jones High School graduate had lost 119 pounds when he officially signed up to be a soldier.

He wanted it that badly.

His father -- who served seven years in the Army -- was so proud. He still is, even now, four days after his 23-year-old son's flag-draped coffin was buried in the family plot outside Anniston.

Pvt. Michael Paul Bridges died Nov. 2 in Taji, Iraq. His father knows it was friendly fire, but that's all he knows.

"I don't have to know exactly what happened right now," Terry Bridges said. "They're investigating it still. One day, I'll need to know.

"More than anything, I want to know that my son didn't die in vain."

Bridges said his son was angry when he had to move from Oxford.

But his mother's husband had gotten transferred to Fort Hood, Texas, and his dad was living in Marietta, Ga. Paul couldn't finish at Oxford High School as he'd hoped.

He went to live with his dad in Marietta and then, a year later, when Bridges got a transfer to Huntsville with Boeing Co., the family moved to Madison.

Paul enrolled at Bob Jones and soon made friends there. Bridges said Paul's best friend, Brian Westmeyer, helped him adjust to his new life, and his son was happy.

After graduating from high school, he tried a semester at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, "but as is the case with some students, he just wasn't ready for college."

That's when he decided to join the Army.

"I hadn't seen him really apply himself to anything since he'd left Oxford," Bridges said. "He was so excited about getting in shape.

"That summer, he went to White Sands, N.M., where his mother and her husband were living. Paul got to work out with the MPs on the Army base there, and they really helped get him in shape for basic training."

Paul -- whom his father described as "a real jokester and the life of the party" -- graduated from infantry school at Fort Benning, Ga., in August 2003. A month later, he finished airborne school. After short stints at Fort Bragg, Fort Hood and Redstone Arsenal, he was deployed to Iraq last December.

Bridges happily recalls the Thanksgiving that his son was stationed at Redstone.

"My wife told him to ask some of the guys from the base over for Thanksgiving," he said. "He said he'd ask four or five guys who didn't have family here to come over.

"The day before Thanksgiving, she asked him again how many were coming. He hemmed and hawed a little bit, then he said, 'Twenty.'"

His stepmother, Sherryl, rushed to get enough food ready for so many dinner guests.

"It really was one of the best Thanksgivings we ever had," Bridges said.

Bridges said his son's infantry unit was stationed in Taji, just north of Baghdad and site of some of the war's worst fighting.

"He saw the worst of the worst," Bridges said. "He would write to us and call when he could, and he seemed OK. He was supposed to come home in a month.

Actually, Bridges had expected him sooner than that.

He said his son called in August to say that something had happened during a firefight and that he was coming home.

He said he was going to ship some of his belongings home.

On Sept. 10, Paul called and said he was in Germany and would be back in the States soon.

When Bridges didn't hear anything for a couple of weeks, he called the Red Cross to track down his son. He was told that Paul was back in Iraq.

"He writes me back on Oct. 10 and tells me it will be December now before he comes home," Bridges said. "The last contact I had with him was Oct. 27, when he wrote a short note on his blog and said he was fine and for everyone not to worry about him.

"On Nov. 2 we get the terrible news that Paul had died in Iraq."

Terry Bridges' mother died in a car wreck when he was just 15. A few years later, when Bridges was in college, his father died of cancer. Not long after that, Bridges' sister Gwen -- who raised him after his mother died -- died of cancer.

Even after all of that sadness, Bridges was not prepared for the sorrow that he felt Friday night, when his son's coffin was flown into Huntsville International Airport.

"I can't explain the power of the grief of knowing that the flag-draped coffin they were putting in the hearse was my son," he said. "I didn't know I could hurt that much."

Paul was buried in the same cemetery outside Anniston as his grandparents and his aunt Gwen.

Bridges said Gwen and Paul adored one another, "and I know she'll look out for him."

Throughout this, Bridges said the military has been "unbelievably" gracious and thoughtful.

He believes that the Army will continue to investigate what happened that day in Taji and let him know how his son died.

"Any anger I have is from the fact that we didn't quell the violence in Iraq sooner," Bridges said. "Maybe if we'd had even more troops and let them do their job, maybe so many men wouldn't have died from roadside bombs.

"I don't want my son to have died in vain. I want to see a stable government in Iraq. If that means dividing the country into three parts, so be it. Why not have the United States of Iraq? These people have been fighting since biblical times.

"They aren't going to hold hands and sing 'Kumbaya' together. We can't make them."

Of course he'd like to see U.S. troops leave Iraq before another father has to get the news that his son or daughter died in war, but Bridges doesn't want the soldiers withdrawn before success.

"I don't want us to cut and run," he said. "If we need to send more troops to go ahead and get the job done, then let's do it.

"Let's do it, and then let's get out."

From the Montgomery Advertiser

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Michael P. Bridges killed in non-combat incident