Perspective: Death of a local soldier personalizes the sorrow

It's enough to make us cry - 3,431 military deaths and it takes the loss of one 20-year-old Torrance boy, one son, one brother, one friend, one big healthy football hero to erase the words we use in place of real names.

Soldier, troop, infantryman, airman, officer, private, corporal, seaman, Marine, boots on the ground, all of them working in the deadly heat of an endlessly repeated cliche, all of them in harm's way.

Finally, it is none of these replacement words. Suddenly it is a boy like your boy and mine, suddenly it is Joseph Anzack Jr., taken from the ancient Euphrates by Iraqis in the cradle of civilization.

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