Running in remembrance

On this sleepless night, David Bruce Hardt started seeing things. They were real, not imaginary, and he felt ignorant he hadn't noticed them before.

He walked through the barracks in Iraq last July and made some stirring observations. Spc. Hardt, a Fort Lewis soldier, saw a board with all the names of his lost comrades, resting just above the door he exits through to go run each day. Hardt trudged down the hallway with his head down. He then looked up and saw a picture of a sergeant in a wheelchair, a white bandage covering his amputated leg. And he read a letter from a captain's wife, updating her husband's recovery from a devastating spinal injury.

Hardt grew angry, and once he relaxed, he made a declaration.

"On Nov. 25, 2007, I am running the Seattle Marathon," he said.

He discovered a profound reason to run, at last. During two tours in Iraq, Hardt always would run — in 125-degree heat, despite the noise of mortars and machine guns, even while more soldiers died — and his motivation was just to finish. He hadn't run a marathon in three years, stopping because he'd lost the passion to compete.

Hello, passion.

On Sunday, Hardt, 31, will run 26.2 miles, wearing a shirt with the names of 48 soldiers his Army unit lost.

He will carry a picture of his uncle Ross, who, eerily, was deployed from Fort Lewis before dying in the Vietnam War. Hardt has been struggling with right-knee tendinitis and leg pain, but he will finish. He must.

"It doesn't matter how much pain I'm going to be in," Hardt said. "I could be bleeding, and my eyes could be popping out. Run, crawl, dive or duck — I'm finishing.

"I hope I can put a face on these people we've lost. If you ask anybody who's the first person we lost in Iraq, few would know the answer. That's sad. They're just ink on a piece of paper, and you turn the page, and the ink is on your thumb. And that's all you remember."

Hardt is 6 feet 2 inches and 179 pounds of pure compassion. The San Bernardino, Calif., native exposes his heart like few men.

He says "I love you" more than a pop singer during a standing ovation. He loves to write; his nickname since basic training has been "Writer." Throughout nearly four years of active duty, he's written a popular blog, "David Hardt in Iraq" (http://blog-ah.typepad.com/blogah/), contributed to The Fort Lewis Ranger newspaper and started a book he plans to publish in 2011, when his active-duty service ends.

He already has a title: "My Rifle and My Last Four."

But he wants to be more than his rifle and the last four digits of his Social Security number. He wants all soldiers to be seen more completely.

First, Hardt had to become more than just a soldier. He has evolved along with the war. During his first tour, he sought only to fight for his country, and he did so with venom. He stashed his heart and battled.

He remembers April 14, 2004, too well. The night before was the last time he could sleep without medication.

On this day, some troops were attacked while they were on patrol. A grenade hit them, and Hardt wound up in the middle of the street, on his back. He crawled to his gun, crawled behind a dirt pile and fired back until he was safe. He was wounded but alive and later received a Purple Heart.

"Got me a Purple Heart — hurray," Hardt deadpanned.

More than the honorable recognition, he craved perspective. His second deployment, which began in 2006, provided it. When Hardt returned home on Sept. 17 this year, he was different. The war was different. Not only did he become human by learning about loss, he also came to appreciate Iraqi citizens.

He rediscovered his heart, found it on Baghdad's notorious Haifa Street. In an alley, he ran into a girl who couldn't have been more than 12. She looked at him and said, "I thank you." Then she kissed him on the cheek.

His thinking shifted from conquer to cradle.

"It changed everything," Hardt said. "I had lost my passion for children. For love. I became indifferent. After I saw the girl, I started seeing people again, flesh and blood. People who needed us."

He's not just serving the Army's 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry C Company, 2nd Platoon Reapers at Fort Lewis.

He's serving people, period.

And he's running Sunday to show his compassion.

"There are days I feel like I can't do what I want to do," Hardt said. "I'll hit a depression. There are days when I'm just like, 'I don't want to let anybody down.' I get nervous. I start thinking, 'What if? What if? What if?' "

He then relaxes and focuses on this journey. This is the culmination of those 40- and 80-mile weeks of running in Iraq, when his life was always in jeopardy. Running was his release, regardless of the danger, taking him back to when he was 18 and competing in marathons and half-marathons all the time. He estimates he ran about 50 of those before he became "lazy, fat and unmotivated."

To gain motivation, he now needs only to remember young soldiers who died. They were 19, 20, 21 years old. Hardt can't fathom what it would be like to live such an incomplete life.

"I would give up my years to let a kid get past 21," he said.

He can offer only his body, however.

He will finish. He must.

"There's no doubt I will," Hardt said. "There's no doubt we will do the same in Iraq. We bleed, and we may die, but we've still got the resolve to continue the mission.

"I'll be damned if I'm not going to run my heart out for them."

Jerry Brewer: 206-464-2277 or jbrewer@seattletimes.com. For more columns and the Extra Points blog, visit seattletimes.com/sports