We'll Miss You, Para

A friend of mine died in a suicide bomb attack on Monday. No, not a fellow American soldier over in Iraq or Afghanistan: a Major General in the Sri Lankan Army, who was in my seminar at the War College.

His name was Parami Kulatunge, whom we called "Para" for short. At the Army War College you spend all of your class time the first half of the year, and a good bit the rest of the year, with your seminar. We were Seminar 12, and we had 17 students (2 women, including myself): 10 Army officers, 1 Marine, 1 Navy, 1 Air Force, 2 government civilians, and 2 International Fellows (IFs). Para, obviously, was one IF; the other was Josef, from Germany. In the picture, Para is the swarthy faced gentleman in the tan uniform standing behind me.

Para spoke very good English, in terms of grammar, syntax and vocabulary. But his accent was so strong that half the time I couldn't understand what he was saying. Which was too bad, because he had a good sense of humor. During the annual Chili Cookoff that year, he made a fish chili!! (Fish and seafood being main dietary elements in Sri Lanka, as it's an island). It was awful, but it was really neat that he participated and put up his own booth.

Even back then (during the War College) Para was a major general in his military. The funny thing was, he didn't know how to do basic household things: cooking, cleaning, etc. Sri Lanka was once a British colony, and the military is modeled after the British military system -- but without a lot of modernization, and many old colonial anachronisms are still present, including the class system where junior enlisted soldiers do all the manual labor for the officers: cooks, valets, landskeepers, etc. Para had always had servants, and had never had to do for himself, so the year at Carlisle was a revelation and a learning experience for him in more than just academics.

I remember the day Para gave the seminar a briefing on Sri Lanka, and talking about the terrorism problem, including the group that killed him Monday. I remember his pride in his country, and his hopes that they would be able to resolve the issues with the terrorist groups (or, well, terminate them all, as there was no love lost betweenthe Sri Lankan government, military and the terrorist group, due to all the deaths on both sides). When the tsumani hit Sri Lanka last year, we were all relieved to hear that Para and his family were safe; Para was heavily involved in the relief effort and coordinating with the US military.

I also remember the pictures of his country that he showed in the briefing, and the invitation he extended to the seminar to come visit. Over the last several months, in fact, the seminar had been exchanging emails, talking about having a seminar reunion in Sri Lanka sometime this year. That will never happen now...

The sad thing is that I no longer remember off the top of my head how many people I know (or knew...) have been killed or seriously injured since 9-11-01. It's sad and scary that there's been enough now that I can't count them easily. And sometimes I have to wrestle with something similar to survivor's guilt, partially from not having deployed on OIF or OEF, but also from 9-11 itself. It's not something that can be explained easily, and it can't be rationalized away. Most of the time it doesn't bother me, but every once in a while something happens, like Para's death, that reminds me.