I did not know Lt. Robert Seidel of the United States Army personally, but I know the young man who, for three years, was his roommate at West Point.  Roommate at West Point is something a little different than your beer-drinking, girl-chasing frat brother at most colleges and universities.  At West Point, he is the first person with whom you go to war.

    The war you fight at West Point is survival.  It is perhaps the most rigorous academic and military training in the world condensed into a four year frenzy in which the Academy breaks you so they can remake you into an elite soldier and officer.  As a student you are fighting wars on all fronts: academic, athletic, social, and psychological.  Plenty of kids can't hack it, plenty of kids wash out or walk away.

    Lt. Socrates Rosenfeld would tell you that Lt. Seidel was the person who got him through those battles.  Lt. Seidel would say the same of Rosenfeld.  Having survived West Point together, there is a bond that forever commits them to each other's welfare.

    After graduation, Rosenfeld went off to flight school at Fort Rucker in Alabama.  He now flies the Army's fiercest aerial weapon, the Apache Longbow helicopter.  Seidel went off to earn his Ranger, Airborne, and Air Assault badges before heading to Iraq.

    And that is where he died - 23 years old, killed by a roadside bomb while riding in a Humvee which the Army can't seem to equip with enough armor to protect its soldiers.  Humvees in Iraq might as well have targets on them. They might as well be coffins.

    To be fair, the Army has strengthened the armor on Humvees, but insurgents in Iraq are making stronger IED's (improvised explosive devices) that have now killed more soldiers in Humvees this year, than during the same period last year.  And thus it was that Lt. Robert Seidel paid the ultimate price for his country.

    It is a price paid from many accounts.  Seidel's death, or that of any soldier, exacts a price from his family, his friends, his unit. It exacts a price from his roommate, Lt. Rosenfeld, who was speechless at the news.  Farewell my friend, farewell the invincibility of youth.

   The billions of dollars spent on the war will eventually be recouped.  Robert Seidel will never come back.  Nor, in a crass accounting, will the hundreds of thousands of dollars the Army spent educating, feeding, and training an elite officer like Seidel. 

    If there is any comfort here it comes in the brave words Seidel said to his mother before going to Iraq.  He said, "if something happens to me, don't be mad and don't be angry.  I will have died doing what I love to do."  Few people can or would say that.  And in that context, the debt we owe can't be measured in a ledger, the debt we owe is to U.S. Army 1st Lt. Robert Seidel.

U.S. Army 1st Lt. Robert Seidel III

    Did he or didn't he?  Only Albert DeSalvo knows for sure and that truth now rests with him in the grave.  Was DeSalvo the man who took the life of Belmont housewife Bessie Golberg in 1963, or was it Roy Smith, the black worker who was helping to clean the Goldberg home that day?

    Part of the reason for the mystery involves another question:  was he or wasn't he?  DeSalvo confessed to being the Boston Strangler, although there has always been some question as to whether a) he was the Strangler, b) he was one of several stranglers operating as copycats or c) he had no role in the stranglings.

    And here's why that doubt is important.  Roy Smith did have a criminal background, mostly for petty crimes and drunkenness.  But more importantly, he had no history of sexual violence.  Given history, the odds that Smith would kill, sexually assault, and tie a stocking around the neck of Bessie Goldberg - all allegedly for the 15 dollars she had on her nightstand seem remote. 

    On the day of the murder, DeSalvo was working construction on a home about a mile away from the Golbergs.  If DeSalvo was, in fact, the Strangler the odds seem even more astronomical that DeSalvo DIDN'T commit a murder that had all the earmarkings of the other strangling victims.

    Sebastian Junger, in his thought provoking examination of the Golberg murder, A Death in Belmont, lays out the entire case in exacting detail leaving the reader in the role of juror.  It is a compelling read although some will find the lack of a resolution frustrating.  But since Smith is dead and always maintained his innocence, and since DeSalvo is dead and admitted to being the Strangler (but not to killing Goldberg) we will never know.

    For Junger, an international journalist and renowned author (The Perfect Storm), this is more than professional, it's personal.  You see the home where DeSalvo was working in Belmont was that of the Junger's and there were many days when Sebastian's mother Ellen was alone in the house with DeSalvo.  Was the Strangler in their home?  And if so, is it but for the grace of God that Ellen Junger didn't suffer the same fate as Bessie Golberg? Or is it because the real killer was, in fact, Roy Smith?

Editor's note: Chronicle examines the Golberg murder and Sebastian Junger's book tonight at 7:30 PM on WCVB-TV, Channel 5.

    I have a confession to make.  A week ago, when the debate was raging over whether to cheer or jeer Johnny Damon on his return to Fenway Park, I had already made up my mind.  You see the day before Damon and the Yankees came to town, I had been cheering him at....gasp....Yankee Stadium. 

    Through no fault of parenting that I can pinpoint, I am raising a Yankees fan.   My son loves the Yankees, both for their success and for the opportunity to exhibit a not so subtle contrarian streak he has inherited (likely from my side of the family).  When the Yankees and Red Sox were battling it out in the League Championship Series in 2003 and 2004, he took great pride in wearing his Yankees cap to "Red Sox Spirit Day" at school.  You get the idea.

    But he also sees his Yankee loyalty as a birthright.  Since I, his father, was born and raised in....gasp....New York City, my son feels that he was "to the empire born" as the Romans would have put it.  In this scenario, he sees me (now an avid Red Sox fan) as a traitor.  I was born to Rome, but cheer for Carthage.

  To be honest, there were years when I rooted for the Yankees.  I was at the final home game at Yankee Stadium in 1973 before they undertook a two year renovation.  I was also in the right field stands when Reggie Jackson hit three home runs in Game Six of the 1977 World Series to beat the Dodgers and clinch the Series.  

    So it was not without some fond memories that I fulfilled a wish for my son's 13 birthday and took him to see the Yankees on their home field - the house that Ruth built.  It was all he could have wished for - a picture perfect day, Mussina on the mound, Rivera in relief and of course, a Yankees win over the Blue Jays.  And yes, sitting there with my son, on his personal journey to baseball heaven, I could not help but root for the hometown team.

    True Red Sox fans will see this as traitorous.  Others may understand my momentary bow to home, heart, and heritage.   I have lived in the Boston area now for many more years than I lived in New York, and I have been captivated by the history and the horror that are the Sox.  I cheered them heartily through the heartache of 2003, and may have thrown the occasional "in your face" to my son during the remarkable postseason comeback of 2004.

    We remain a house divided when the Sox and Yankees play.  But at least we are bound by a love of baseball and the rivalry.  And as any parent of a teenager knows, you take those connections wherever you can find them.  Go Sox!