Continue Mission: Remembrance and Healing on Memorial Day
My wife and I took our girls to an amazing local Memorial Day ceremony. Our daughters are young, and we feel so strongly about imparting the gravity of this day to them as early as possible.
The event was small and personal but well-attended, and the ceremony was extremely moving. Outside, under a light shade tent on a beautiful sunny day in a local veterans’ park, a live ensemble played patriotic brass band music of old followed by all the service songs. I watched as my girls held their hands to their hearts for the national anthem. Then the keynote speakers delivered moving speeches about remembrance, wars past and present, and honoring all those who gave their lives in defense of our nation and its ideals.
At the end of the ceremonies, all the veterans in the crowd were called to attention to salute a Gold Star grandmother in the audience, whose grandson was killed in action in 2013 in Afghanistan. Tears flowed amongst those in attendance, and my wife and young daughters had a touching exchange with the grandmother afterwards.
Following the ceremony, everyone was asked to pick out a toy soldier to place at the base of the large stone veterans’ monument in the memorial park. There were soldiers of five different colors, to represent each of the services. And each soldier had a small tag attached where you could write the name of any fallen service member. The toy soldiers would then be kept by the city year-to-year to be put out and added to each Memorial Day.
We picked one toy soldier for each of us in our little family. My wife and I chose who we would honor: four of our fallen, whose deaths directly affected both of us throughout my career. To bring a personal perspective to this Memorial Day, I'd like to highlight the four here, along with a short dissertation of how they were killed, my connection to them, and how their deaths affected my life.
Staff Sergeant Jacob L. Frazier
US Air Force Tactical Air Control Party (TACP)
KIA Afghanistan March 29, 2003
I never knew Jacob Frazier. I was in the states going through training when he was killed, and I was never stationed with him. But he was the first within my small career field, the US Air Force Tactical Air Control Party, to be killed in action in what would become the decades-long war on terror. That resonated with every one of us.
Jacob was killed fighting during a well-coordinated ambush against him and his Special Forces team. My career field later designated a prestigious award in his honor to be given to one hand chosen TACP JTAC (Joint Terminal Attack Controller) each year. It was designated the Jacob Frazier TACP JTAC of the Year award; and was a great honor for so many reasons.
In 2014, I was the recipient of the award from both Headquarters Air Force and the Air Force Special Operations Command for my efforts in the first months of the fight against ISIS. It was incredibly humbling, and, hopefully in some way, honoring to his sacrifice.
I didn’t let my pride in receiving the accolade overtake who the award was named after, and the real reasons behind what we all did.
Technical Sergeant John W. Brown
US Air Force Pararescueman (PJ)
KIA Afghanistan August 6, 2011
"Big John Brown" was one of my best friends. And, as is often the case in military bonds and friendships, so were my wife and his. We'd all been neighbors years back, while the two of us had endured some of the toughest military training out there. He was the truest definition of a "gentle giant," and we shared one of those unspoken bonds.
Since our time as neighbors and trainees, we had gone our separate ways in our careers—I had since taken a separate path to become a JTAC and John went on to become one of the most solid PJs in the Air Force. But we all stayed in touch and had great times visiting each other when we could. In summer of 2011, while he was in the midst of what would become the last combat rotation of his life, my wife and I were moving to the same base as him and Tabitha. I’d been transferred to a sister unit; we had just gotten to the area and were in process of setting up the house we’d rented.
John was set to be home in a couple of weeks. Then, he was gone. John, along with fellow PJ Dan Zerbe, Combat Controller Andy Harvell, and 35 more SEALs, crew members, and combat attachments, were killed by the Taliban when the Chinook helicopter they were infilling on was shot down during a high-profile mission now known as Extortion 17.
We’d been so excited to see John again, the four of us elated to reunite. But it became a best-friend reunion that never was, and it rocked my wife and I to our core.
I was asked by his wife, and our beloved friend, to speak at John’s military service and burial at Arlington National Cemetery. The honor and magnitude of that experience shaped me deeply then and since. I would carry a set of his dog tags that she gave me, secured inside my armored chest plate carrier, on every rotation after.
Staff Sergeant Jeremie S. Border
U.S. Army Special Forces Weapons Sergeant
KIA Afghanistan September 1, 2012
It was fall of 2012. I was on a rotation to Afghanistan, attached to a Special Forces team running Afghan Commandos against Taliban safe havens throughout the eastern provinces of the war-torn nation.
Of all the guys on that team, I'd gotten closest to Jeremie, and pretty quickly. He was a Special Forces operator who consummately sought to be the technical expert in his specialty and who you’d always want next to you on objective. He was also a great guy to hang out with during our down-time back at the compound, and he had a funny but healthy obsession with Batman and the motif surrounding the character—the normal man with no real superpowers using his grit and intelligence to become a real superhero. During our time getting to know each other, we also realized we’d had a mutual friend back in Texas who he’d gone to high school with.
I'd just rotated out with another JTAC team, but Jeremie’s ODA (Operational Detachment Alpha) had a few more weeks left. As attachments, we were rarely synced on the same rotation schedule, and we often overlapped to support a couple of different ODAs on the same rotation. But, a couple weeks after getting home, I got word that Jeremie was killed in an offensive operation along with the team's Army EOD specialist, Staff Sergeant Jon Schmidt. They both were hit by gunfire while attempting a bold counterassault against heavy enemy fire on their position.
Since I was back home station, I was able to go to Jeremie's funeral back in Texas. On one hand I was lucky for that, because the entire team—save for the senior weapons sergeant, who escorted Jeremie’s body back home—had to stay back and, as always, continue mission. One of the toughest pills to swallow, and the charge and sacrifice of the warfighter, who doesn’t always have time or opportunity to mourn fallen brothers or sisters.
After the service was the viewing. Laying perfectly still, and at peace in his casket, was among the hardest but nicest guys you'd want to meet, who'd I'd just been jaunting confidently through the tough Afghan terrain with only a few weeks before, hunting cells of the Taliban through remote mountain villages. His huge dreams cut short, and a family devastated.
I wore the team's patch on every rotation after.
Staff Sergeant Forrest B. Sibley
US Air Force Combat Controller
KIA Afghanistan August 26, 2015
In fall of 2015 I was the lead JTAC for my unit’s deployment to the Syria theatre of operations. I was tasked under the joint special operations task force running a newly initiated special operations mission against ISIS in Syria and heading up the airstrike campaign to support Syrian proxy forces.
Back home, before we’d all pushed out for the rotation, Forrest had recently shown to our unit. He'd come from a sister unit where his JTAC certification had lapsed. I was the chief JTAC program manager, and my “Fires” team was charged with getting his currencies back up and a formal evaluation knocked out so that he could deploy and not miss the rotation. No one wanted to miss a rotation, and we usually couldn’t afford for guys to stay back.
I didn't get a chance to know Forrest well, as I was charged with ensuring every JTAC at the unit had both the up-to-date currencies and the most recent operational understanding to make them 100% ready for the upcoming rotation. But what I knew of Forrest before we left was an experienced, smart, and driven operator who was good-natured and respected by all. And, as the senior JTAC trainer and evaluator in the unit, I had a deep feeling of responsibility over all our JTACs who went downrange.
As had become standard over the years, our JTACs were to be sliced out to various operating locations across the Atlantic, between the Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Africa theatres of operation. Forrest was among those tasked to Afghanistan, where the fight had by then become almost solely the domain of U.S. special operations enabling Afghan forces on offensive operations against the Taliban. Insurgency activity had picked up considerably since the withdrawal of conventional forces, and action was pretty regular. Along with insider attacks.
Barely two weeks into the deployment, we all got the word that Forrest was killed in action alongside Special Tactics Officer Captain Matthew Roland, who Forrest was doing mission handover with. A Taliban infiltrator had ambushed them and their Special Forces team as they made their way into their encampment on a routine movement. The two made an incredibly valiant stand, returning direct fire as the closest members on the team to engage the infiltrator but also the ones to take the brunt of enemy fire.
Those two combat deaths tore apart our small deployed Special Tactics unit—then spread across four major theaters from the Middle East to Africa and still in the initial days of a months-long combat rotation. Nevertheless, we all drove on.
Continue mission.
To do anything less endangers the mission and, in some ways, dishonors their very sacrifice.
I hope Memorial Day becomes something that each of us can truly connect to, in a visceral way, by seeing it through the eyes of those who have felt its true meaning.
Maybe you are a veteran, with a lot of pain, who would rather ignore it all and forget—who would rather continue mission. I’ve been there before. But I offer to stop shoving it down, as you perhaps once had to. Because you don’t anymore. You might find a solace that you never imagined you would.
Whether you are a veteran, a survivor, a military family member, or a person with no ties to the military but American just the same—listen to their stories. Hear the truths of surviving veterans and friends and family members. Discover the amazing stories of so many past and present, and of our fallen. Share in remembering and in honoring their sacrifices. Share in the pain of those left behind.
These are the things that unite us all as Americans. These are the things that can heal us. And these are the lessons we can pass on to the next generation to one day lead us to a better world.
