Private Daniel Chen was fighting a personal war.
Dec 22, 2011 20:31:24 GMT -5
Post by helen on Dec 22, 2011 20:31:24 GMT -5
Even before the Army sent him to Afghanistan, supporters say, Private Daniel Chen was fighting a personal war.
Fellow soldiers at a base in the southern state of Georgia teased him about his Chinese name, crying out "Chen!" in an exaggerated Asian accent. They called him "Jackie Chen," a reference to the Hollywood action star Jackie Chan. People would ask him repeatedly if he was from China, even though he was a native New Yorker.
At one point Chen wrote in his diary that he was running out of jokes to respond with.
Then he was sent overseas, and the hazing began: Soldiers dragged him across a floor, pelted him with stones and forced him to hold liquid in his mouth while hanging upside down, according to diary entries and other accounts cited by a community activist.
On October 3, the 19-year-old Chen was found dead in a guardhouse in Afghanistan with what the Army said was apparently a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10774908
Fellow soldiers at a base in the southern state of Georgia teased him about his Chinese name, crying out "Chen!" in an exaggerated Asian accent. They called him "Jackie Chen," a reference to the Hollywood action star Jackie Chan. People would ask him repeatedly if he was from China, even though he was a native New Yorker.
At one point Chen wrote in his diary that he was running out of jokes to respond with.
Then he was sent overseas, and the hazing began: Soldiers dragged him across a floor, pelted him with stones and forced him to hold liquid in his mouth while hanging upside down, according to diary entries and other accounts cited by a community activist.
On October 3, the 19-year-old Chen was found dead in a guardhouse in Afghanistan with what the Army said was apparently a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10774908