Comrades

JOHANNESBURG -- For South Africa, yesterday's Comrades Marathon is the New York and Boston marathons wrapped up into one. It has the tradition of Boston and the popularity of New York.And at 55 miles it's also longer than those two 26.2-mile races put together.With that in mind, try to decide which is crazier: that 14,000 people run the Comrades every year, or that much of the country spends its Republic Day holiday watching them do it on television.In that way, the Comrades is like the Kentucky Derby in that as the race approaches, millions become avid fans and would-be experts of a sport they pay little attention to the rest of the year.

Navy linebacker Brye French had never met Brendan Looney, only hearing stories about the former academy lacrosse star and his two brothers from longtime coach Richie Meade. Then one day during French's sophomore year, Meade told his team that the eldest Looney brother had died in Iraq. French, who had come to Navy to play both lacrosse and football, began to understand the reasons he was in Annapolis when he heard about Looney's death in a helicopter crash. It was further clarified for French when the lacrosse team attended the funeral of Navy SEAL from Silver Spring.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Bruce Fordyce lives in a fine house in one of Johannesburg's oldest suburban neighborhoods. The garden is filled with flowers and a frisky golden retriever. The interior is stylishly decorated. There's a swimming pool out back.He can afford this lifestyle for one reason -- in the 1980s, he could run the 55 miles between the cities of Durban and Pietermaritzburg faster than any other South African.In any other country, this would make Fordyce an oddity, up there with flagpole sitters or plate spinners or those who jump rope for three days to get into the "Guinness Book of World Records."

You guys really make me laugh ("Obama and judicial review," April 6). You write: "Here's an idea. Could everyone agree, between now and November to engage in genuine debate about issues affecting the American people?" Every time Comrade Barack Obama missteps, there is an excuse, but let one of the Republicans make a mistake and The Sun gets up on it left leg and has one big hissy-fit. This guy wants to get reelected and really doesn't care how he does it, and neither do you. And last but not least, do you think Mr. Obama really cares about "issues affecting the American people?"

DURBAN, South Africa - Jogging through his hilly neighborhood last week, Billy Mattig said he knows no man can run forever. He just wants to complete the 55-mile Comrades Marathon twice more. Then he'll take it easy. "When you get older," the former railroad worker said, "you feel the hills more." Mattig, for the record, is 80. He has entered the annual ultramarathon 25 times, finishing 18. Far from an anomaly, he is part of a national obsession that has made the race into an annual spectacle, an event that, on June 16, millions of South Africans will watch on television from dawn to dusk.

PETROVAC, Macedonia -- Staff Sgt. Chris Stone's voice was so flat, so unemotional, that when he radioed for help Wednesday, his superior officer, Sgt. 1st Class Jim LaShelle, didn't think he was serious and began to cut him off. "Grid 675 -- " Stone said, before LaShelle broke in on the radio line to make sure Stone wasn't kidding. But that was only half of a six-digit number needed to locate Stone and two other soldiers whose Humvee had been surrounded by Serbs. When Stone repeated that they were taking direct fire, LaShelle knew it was true and bolted up straight.

Cheer up. The General Assembly is on the job.Gorbachev cut guns from the budget. Comrades ask, "Where's the butter?"

The good news is that the evil Soviet Union is disintegrating. The bad news is that instead of three votes at the United Nations, they will now get 15.High school student SAT scores are lower than ever, but since fewer than ever can afford college, freshmen-admit scores will -- rise.Some comrades want to link the economies of the Soviet republics while other comrades ask, what economies?

HARARE, Zimbabwe - She has to call the young men her "comrades." She cooks food for the comrades and serves them. She sweeps the comrades' floor and cleans up after them. And whenever any of the comrades wants sex, she is raped. Asiatu, 21, is a prisoner of the comrades at a command base of the ruling ZANU-PF, one of 900 set up by the party to terrorize Zimbabweans into voting Robert G. Mugabe back into power in the one-man presidential runoff election late last month. The election is over, but the terror isn't.

Revolutions tend to devour their children. Mikhail S. Gorbachev at least physically survived the incredible chain of events he set in motion after becoming the Kremlin leader in March 1985. He was a daring reformer but still lacked the courage to take the ultimate leaps to make his programs work and to stay in power. As he steps down as president of the now-defunct Soviet Union he leaves a changed world as his legacy.Mr. Gorbachev was a visionary but his vision failed. He understood his country's deep problems but did not grasp their true cause.

Robert Burns hasn't been able to walk since the day 30 years ago when a chunk of rock fell on his spine as he toiled on hands and knees in a West Virginia coal mine near the Maryland line. The 1980 mishap that put him in a wheelchair was "just freak," he said. "I was in the wrong place, that was it." This week Burns, like many here in Western Maryland's rolling coal country, has closely tracked news of the West Virginia mine explosion that killed at least 25 miners. Burns, 58, isn't blaming mine operator Massey Energy Co., despite reports of serious violations at its Upper Big Branch mine in the months before Monday's blast.

HARARE, Zimbabwe - She has to call the young men her "comrades." She cooks food for the comrades and serves them. She sweeps the comrades' floor and cleans up after them. And whenever any of the comrades wants sex, she is raped. Asiatu, 21, is a prisoner of the comrades at a command base of the ruling ZANU-PF, one of 900 set up by the party to terrorize Zimbabweans into voting Robert G. Mugabe back into power in the one-man presidential runoff election late last month. The election is over, but the terror isn't.

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif.-- --The names - while comic - were meant to reflect an unfunny reality: the sometimes overbearing stress felt by Marines and sailors serving in Iraq. Such as Corporal Angermode, who after a roadside bomb exploded in Iraq began telling his fellow Marines that he couldn't wait to begin killing Iraqis. Chief Screamer, who dealt with his stress by screaming at everyone. And Lance Corporal Stoneface, who just shut down emotionally and kept silently to himself. In a recent lecture to newly promoted corporals, Navy Cmdr.

MOSCOW -- They met at a gathering of exiles in 1898, two revolutionary-minded activists with a penchant for talking politics and literature. He was attracted by her ideas, her morality, her kind but serious eyes. Felix Dzerzhinsky fell deeply in love. The man who would later direct the first Soviet secret police and orchestrate the purges of the Red Terror is famously known as "Iron Felix," a name befitting his blind devotion to the Bolshevik cause and his utter ruthlessness in eliminating enemies, real or perceived.

Wally Mueller vividly remembers his buddies who were killed in combat. He thinks about them when he's driving his car, or marching with the American Legion color guard, or talking to children about patriotism and the meaning of Memorial Day. "Memorial Day is a day set aside to remember all service members who have paid the ultimate price for their country," the decorated retired Army colonel said. "It's a day to honor those who made it possible for us to be free." Although the 64-year-old Bel Air resident returned from Vietnam almost 40 years ago, his memories of the war are indelibly etched in his mind.

An Annapolis-area Marine known as the "Lion of Fallujah" was killed Friday in Iraq while commanding a raid on insurgent forces in Baghdad, military officials said yesterday. Maj. Douglas A. Zembiec, a 1995 Naval Academy graduate who was awarded the Bronze Star with a V for valor for his actions in Fallujah in 2004 and also received a Purple Heart, will be buried tomorrow with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. An unabashed warrior who considered it an honor to lead his Marines into combat, Major Zembiec, 34, had a reputation for inspiring his men with a selfless, lead-from-the-front philosophy.

SOMMOCOLONIA, Italy - Albert O. Burke, 80, silently strolled around the ruins of a medieval fortress in the village where dozens of black servicemen were killed Dec. 26, 1944, and broke down. "I felt I owed it to the fellows to come back," he sobbed as two other frail veterans held him up. "But I don't think I want to come back here anymore." The place that stirred him so deeply was Sommocolonia, a poignant footnote in both World War II military history and the uncompleted story of America's black war veterans.

In this presidential election year, a soldier from North Laurel and a naval officer from Arizona are setting the tone. In their unique ways and on different stages, Alfred V. Rascon and Sen. John McCain, have what Americans crave: courage, humility, determination. In different ways, they started toward the year 2000 from the war in Vietnam and suddenly find themselves headed toward the White House -- to be honored for the sacrifices they made for comrades and for country. Mr. McCain, of course, is a Republican running for president.

One of the bitter ironies of the 20th century was that communism, which began as an egalitarian doctrine accusing capitalism of selfishness and callousness toward others, became in power a system whose selfishness and callousness made the sins of capitalism pale. The ruling elites of the Soviet Union, called the nomenklatura, had their own separate and superior stores where ordinary citizens were not allowed to shop, their own separate and superior medical facilities and their own separate and superior living quarters, all off limits to the masses.

At a prayer breakfast in Baghdad, Iraq, last week, Col. William Wood tearfully promised soldiers in the California National Guard battalion that the killing and wounding of soldiers in his battered unit would come to an end. No more soldier photographs, he pledged, would be added under his watch to the already crowded wall at Forward Operating Base Falcon where the battalion honors its dead. Less than 48 hours later, Wood, 44, died in a roadside bomb explosion when he came to the aid of a fallen comrade.