As soon as I saw the email my heart stopped. Ever since I met Staff Sgt Joe Cox this spring, in the back of my mind, I have worried about him.

Click here to read my original blog on Sgt. Cox. >>

I met him half way through his second tour in Iraq. Cox’s story was one of the most human and powerful stories I have ever reported and you responded with hundreds of emails. Cox is trying to change Iraq “one picture at a time.”

He takes pictures of Iraqi kids, prints them out back at base, and then gives them to the kids. It maybe the only picture their family has.

Back to Cox, his mother said his stryker was hit by an IED. Here is what she wrote:

Hi Catherine:

Jo Cox here, mother of SSGT. Joseph Cox. I got a call this morning at 4am from Joseph saying that their stryker had been blown up and he want to let me and his Dad know that he was o.k.. He didn’t sound o,k, because he had a quiver in his voice. I talked to him for about 5 or 10 minutes trying to see if I could tell if anything was wrong but he kept telling me all about the other guys.

I was wondering if you got any king of news as to what happened as we don’t hear anything about Iraq anymore since it is election time. Also, our little t.v. station don’t mention anything unless one of the guys gets killed. This happened the last time he was in Iraq. Just before they got to come home, they made a thunder run and 8 of the guys got killed. I just pray that he makes it until October 6 as that is when they are schedule to come back to Germany and we are going to see him home.

Please let me know if you have heard anything. I would appreciate it very much.

Thanks,
Jo Cox

That weekend, I spent a lot of time on the phone to Germany where Cox’s team is based. I couldn’t get much information because I’m not a family member, but I persisted anyway.

I clearly rattled some cages because a few days later I got this email from Joe.

hey catherine,

heard you were asking about my accident, someone has contacted our regiment asking for permission to release my info to fox news, dont know if it was for you or now. here is what i can tell you, we were investigating possible supply routes, and hold up locations, our enginieers had cleared as much of the route as the could, then we movedthem to our secondary objective. the reason they couldnt clear the whole route is the vehicles they have to use are more prone to roll over, so we pushed further in in our stryker, it was a calculated risk, we are always aware of the danger, this is one of the few times we didnt catchthe bomb before it caught us. the specifics havent been released to us about the exact type of explosive it was yet. the only thing that matters is we were all good and cracking jokes to each other within minutes. i had a concussion and bone briuses on my left foot, we had one person with a broken foot. the stryker did its job,
it absorbed the blast and once again saved soldiers. i am less than a month out, as you know i have lost dear friends that i have worked with in the past, thisis the closest i have been or ever want to be to loosing one of the guys who work for me. we now joke with our engineers that we had to go do there job for them, but they are one brave, or crazy group of guys we try to avoid bombs they arent happy unless they are finding them. the most common thing they joke about is that we cheated them out o gettingblown up…..at least i think they are joking…. SFC Kirrkwood of the 84th engineers is the platoon sergeant for them, he was with us a few months last deployment before getting hurt and evaced back to the states, now he is here doing the same thing again thank god he hasnt got hurt this time, that is the real story here, guys who almost loose it all and still come back. once again, thank you for your concern and hope this helps”

Typical of Joe, he says he is okay, he will be back in Germany this month and he has sent me pictures of the Stryker and a little boy who they are trying to help. He was hurt in a roadside attack. The picture on the top of this blog is so striking to me. Look at the little boy’s mother smiling to the left as Cox holds her son.

I had a lot of people ask me if Joe is going to sell his pictures. He told me he is thinking about it, he’s looking into frames, and he wants to. I don’t think he understands how his pictures continue to bring so many people together. After our first story for Memorial Day, I heard from three of the families whose sons, from Cox’s unit, were killed in January 2008 when a house was booby trapped. Among them the father’s of Matt Pionk, Jon Dozier and the family of Todd Davis.

I hope you will follow the link back to the original story. Reading the comments is still so moving. Joe wanted me to pass along his thanks, the messages to him and his buddies, meant the world. And as I write this, I am struck by the power of a single picture.