Name Laura Youngblood | Role Sailor | |
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Laura Youngblood is a veteran of the United States Navy and wife of a sailor who was killed during the Iraq War. She has gained recent prominence for her public interactions with anti-war mother Cindy Sheehan.
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Travis Youngblood
Travis Youngblood was a United States Navy Corpsman who died in Hit, Iraq Al Anbar Province because of wounds incurred by an improvised explosive device on July 21, 2005. In his final letter home, he asked his wife to take care of his fellow soldiers.
In 1999, the couple met in the United States Navy (which they both served in) at the Naval Hospital Corps School in Great Lakes. They were married on New Years' Eve in 1999, and Laura was pregnant with their daughter, Emma, at the time of Travis's death.
Youngblood was critical of the United States military and the way they handled notifying family of injury and death. According to an article in the Amherst Times:
"Because of the pregnancy, she said, the corpsman assisting her did not want to tell her that her husband was 'very seriously injured.' When she was finally told he was off his ventilator, she recalls saying, 'Good, because you never told me he was on one.'"Laura Youngblood and Cindy Sheehan
Youngblood first clashed with Cindy Sheehan on MSNBC, when Sheehan told Youngblood that her daughter would be "fatherless for a lie." Youngblood responded, and continues to respond, that her daughter will "never be fatherless," as Travis felt the war was inevitable due to Saddam Hussein retaining power following the original Operation Desert Storm conflict in 1991. He was cited by Youngblood as saying that he could not fathom his own son, Hunter, having to fight the war again in 15 years.
According to Youngblood, when she had heard that noted anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan was coming to Waco, Texas, stated that she "had enough." She attended the protest and climbed the steps of the McLennan County Courthouse on April 13, 2006, and began shouting at the Sheehan-led crowd to applaud the troops while holding a photo of her slain husband.
Youngblood was recently on the Fox News program Hannity & Colmes, where she told her story again and noted what she believes is hypocrisy that Sheehan will not speak to her again, even though Sheehan continues to demand another meeting with President George W. Bush.