Sunday, March 21, 2004

(Part 2 of 2)

Presidents and generals are all fine and good, but for me the best part of the visit was spending time with the guys.

Before I get too much into this, I want to say this: the soldiers I was with over the weekend are the finest men I have ever had the honor of meeting. They are, to a man, loyal, courageous, honorable, respectful, strong, and good. We truly do send the best of us to fight and die. These men are amazing. I am enriched by knowing them, and my heart rests easier knowing that my brother was surrounded by men of this caliber--true men, in every sense of the word.

All of the guys I’m going to talk about were in my brother’s company, and almost all of them were in my brother’s platoon--and most of them were in his squad. In this picture, top row from left to right, is Spc. Joe Woods, Spc, Chris Khuelem, me, PV2 Jason McBride (who stayed with us four weeks ago for a weekend), and Spc, Phillips. Bottom row is my dad, Spc. Matt Watson, and my mom. Here’s another pic, and here’s one with KK in it! She’s pretty! I love her!

Chris acted as our chauffeur and guide for the weekend, and you will never meet a friendlier guy, and he and Phillips were good friends with my brother. Woods, Watson, and McBride were also buddies with my brother, and those three were present when he was killed. Woods helped pull my brother from the wreckage of the HMMWV, and McBride took my brother’s weapon and stood over my brother, with his feet planted on either side of his body, and made sure none of the locals came close and tried to look at him.

Watson--he’s my favorite, although he was hurt very badly in the attack. Watson was in the front seat of my brother’s HMMWV when they were hit, and was chewed pretty thoroughly by shrapnel. He ended up with a really wicked-cool scar on his face--check it out, ladies!--but he also has a large amount of scaring on his arms and legs and back, and he’s lost most of the mobility and feeling in his right arm and hand, and he’s also lost a good amount of his vision in his right eye. He’s going through the torture of physical therapy right now. When I asked him how he was doing, he said, “Good, now that they’re done cutting on me. Seven surgeries is enough. They wanted to do another set, but I told them ‘no’.”

We spent a LOT of time talking with these guys. After a few hours, Lt. Adam Carollo showed up sporting a broken arm, which he’d not had the evening before. It turns out that he’d dropped his motorcycle at twenty miles an hour when the back wheel hit some gravel. He immediately became an object of derision and remained such for several minutes. It was pretty funny.

Lt. Carollo only knew my brother for six days, but my brother made a large impression on him. Adam was responsible for organizing the weekend get-together, and he’s also an amazing guy.

The soldiers presented my parents and I with a large flag that everyone in the platoon (the “Hooligans”) had signed, in honor of my brother. It was difficult to photograph, so I took a few--an overview, a detail of the left side, a second detail of the left side, and a detail of the right side.

We also got to meet Captain Mike Wiser, the company commander. You talk about an Army poster boy--this guy is it. He is the very model of an early-thirties man with his shit absolutely squared away: tall, strong jaw, precision haircut, good teeth, a ready smile and a solid handshake. He was a caring, compassionate guy and he talked to me at length. I jokingly asked him if I could get some time on the range with an M240B like my brother carried, and his face fell. I apologized for offending him, and he held up his hands and started apologizing to me--he said that they were out of 7.62mm ammunition, and that they were getting some more next week. If they’d had ammo, he said, he would have taken me directly over to fire off a few rounds. Talk about endearing yourself to someone--he became my instant hero!

Saturday evening, we had dinner at the home of Lt. Col. Stephen Bruch. If Captain Wiser is the perfect model of an early-thirties officer, then Col. Bruch is the perfect model of an early-forties officer. I do believe that his haircut could have actually cut glass, and if there was an ounce of fat anywhere on his body, I sure as hell don’t know where he could have put it. Hugging this guy was like hugging a block of marble.

Col. Bruch has something that not every commander has--a respect from his men that borders on awe. He has this respect because he is unafraid of getting his hands dirty. We were told by the guys that during the war phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Lt. Col. Bruch would frequently participate in raids and house-clearing, and that he was in the dirt with the men the entire time. We told him of the respect his soldiers have for him, and he blushed. It is a high compliment.

Dinner was wonderful, because Stephen’s wife, Kimmie, is a fantastic cook. Afterward, Captain Wiser presented my parents and I with copies of the company’s coin. They didn’t have one before Operation Iraqi Freedom, but now that they were back from duty, the company leadership had designed and produced a coin for the men. The obverse side of the coin has the company’s name (the “Gators”) and a big honking gator on it. The reverse side has around the edge the list of cities in which they fought; a picture of Iraq surrounded by the CIB emblem, the Strike emblem, and the black heart; and, in a show of honor that nearly brought me to my knees, my brother’s battle number (HU1144) is on a banner immediately under “Operation Iraqi Freedom”. Captain Wiser said that this was done to honor my brother, and that this is a permanent thing.

I was pretty much speechless.

There is more--so much more--but I’m not going to write about it now, since between parts one and two I’ve almost written six pages of stuff. Know that my brother was greatly honored, and that my family and I are honored. Know also that there are no finer men on this earth than those who fight and die for us.

Posted by Keeper @ 08:59 PM CST [Link]

(Part 1 of 2)

KK and I returned today from spending the weekend at Ft. Campbell, home of the Army's 101st Airborne division. KK and I arrived Friday and met my parents, and then spent the evening and all of Saturday with the men who served with my brother in A Company 2/502--the "Gators". Together, they participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom from its beginning through early Februrary of 2004, and fought in Baghdad, Al Iskanderiya, Karbala, An Najaf, and Mosul. We met the enlisted men; my brother's platoon commander, Lt. Adam Carollo; the company commander, Cpt. Mike Wiser; and the batallion commander, Lt. Col. Stephen Bruch. More about them in the next part of the update—first, I want to talk about my parents.

My parents arrived two days earlier, on Wednesday, at the invitation of Gen. Petraeus, the commander of the 101st Airborne division. They were contacted on Tuesday and asked to push their arrival date back two days to Wednesday instead of Friday, in order to be present on Thursday to meet President Bush, who was scheduled to speak at Ft. Campbell on Thursday. Thursday was a whirlwind of a day for them--after the President's general address, which you might've seen, since it was televised and stuff--my parents and about sixty other families who had lost soldiers were brought into the 101st Airborne division's museum and arranged twenty or so feet apart from each other. President Bush and his wife then met, individually, with each family and spoke to them each for between five and ten minutes. All told, he spent over three hours (two hours more than was originally scheduled) speaking with families of lost soldiers.

While waiting for the President to get to them, there were a number of Army generals who were walking between the families, offering their own condolences. General Ellis, the Army FORSCOM commanding general, shook my parents’ hands and introduced himself. After a few minutes of conversation, my father asked General Ellis if he knew Brig. General Tom Bostic, who spoke at my brother’s funeral.

General Ellis laughed and said that he had in fact trained General Bostic, and taught him everything that he knew. My father told Gen. Ellis that Gen. Bostic had spoken at my brother’s funeral, and Gen. Ellis’s eyes went wide. He then said, “So, you’re the family.”

My father asked Gen. Ellis what he meant, and Gen. Ellis responded that after my brother’s funeral, Gen. Bostic had written a letter to Gen. Ellis, describing the service and my brother and my family, and telling Gen. Ellis that he thought my brother was a fabulous soldier and upheld the Army’s core values and that we were a good family and some stuff like that. Gen. Ellis had passed the letter on to Gen. Schoomaker, the Army Chief of Staff, and Gen. Schoomaker had then circulated the letter around to the other members of his staff.

Gen. Ellis then grabbed my father’s arm and said, “Wait here.” He ran off and came back a moment later with Gen. Schoomaker himself. The Army Chief of Staff talked to my parents for nearly a quarter of an hour, offering his personal condolences and telling them that he, too, thought my brother to be a fine soldier and a perfect example of the kind of man the Army needs. My parents were touched. The praise of the President is wonderful, but Schoomaker is a soldier’s soldier—read his bio; for Pete’s sake, the man has done it ALL—and to hear him say that kind of thing carries a very real and powerful weight. My parents asked Gens. Ellis and Schoomaker to sign my brother’s memorial book, and they did.

The president came over immediately after that. My parents said that he was an extremely intense, hands-on person. He hugged my mother and father and kissed my mother’s cheeks, and his wife did the same, and he maintained excellent eye contact when he was speaking or being spoken to. My parents said he was extremely affectionate, extremely personable, and extremely sincere. He thanked my parents, and listened to them talk about my brother, and said that he was a wonderful soldier and that the country—and he personally—was honored and awed by his courage and sacrifice.

He didn’t rush, didn’t push, and let my parents say everything they needed to say. My mother and father both said that when he was focusing on you, there existed to him no one else in the world—you had his complete attention. They said that he seemed, all in all, a solid, honest, real person—no bullshit. My parents had brought with them the letter from the president’s office that was sent to them in December, and Laura Bush signed it. The president then signed my brother’s memorial book, as well.

The woman next in line was a very young woman who had lost her husband—she was there by herself. When the President approached her, she threw herself into his arms and sobbed and wept all over him. He held her, and Laura Bush held them both, and my parents said that they could hear the President saying, over and over again, “I am honored by your tears.” The woman didn’t say anything to him for nearly ten minutes—she just held on and sobbed.

That evening, my parents attended the formal brigade dinner, hosted at a local bed and breakfast by General Petraeus. They spent a lot of time in conversation with Col. Anderson, commander of the 502nd Infantry Regiment. Col. Anderson was well-aware of who my brother was; he said that he had been watching him for several months and had been very impressed by his performance during Operation Iraqi Freedom and during the occupation phase in Mosul. He said that he had been preparing to have my brother removed from his unit and assigned as his personal driver, which from what I understand is a fast-track to promotion. Col. Anderson said that he would have done it sooner, except that he knew my brother would have felt guilt at being withdrawn from his unit and abandoning his squadmates, and Col. Anderson therefore wanted to wait as long as possible before pulling him out. Such things are unfortunate, but my parents and I aren’t angry about it—we’re honored that my brother seemed to be such a good soldier that he would draw that kind of attention.

They also spoke with CSM Chapman, who was also attending the dinner. CSM Chapman told us that he, too, had been watching my brother. He said that upon returning stateside, he was going to tap my brother to serve as a model in one of the batch of recruitment posters. My hamming, hammy, stage-loving brother would have gotten the biggest kick out of that! Out of everything that’s happened, that’s what I wish most that he could have seen—he would have loved it!

My brother made an incredible name for himself in the short time he was a soldier, and I wish that he could have continued his career—he was an amazing soldier, and a wonderful man. I will always love him.

Posted by Keeper @ 08:09 PM CST [Link]