We will never forget!
July 30, 2003
A soldier died last week.
He had married, literally, the girl next door, his childhood sweetheart. He grew up in Proctor, Vt., where he painted gas tanks for spending money and was captain of his high school soccer team. Outside Mosul, in northern Iraq, his enemies struck first, firing bullets and rocket-propelled grenades at his vehicle in a surprise attack while he was on patrol in Tall Afar.
In 1996, the same year he enlisted in the National Guard, he helped his team win the state soccer championship. He was the kind of kid adults liked. "Thank you so much for letting him come over to play," they would tell his parents.
He wanted to be an airborne Ranger and rappel from a helicopter. After high school he joined the Army - a gesture to his late stepfather, Ron Walsh, an Army veteran who died in a car accident nine years ago - went to basic training and joined the infantry. After Sept. 11, he served in Afghanistan and once ate lunch with Gen. Tommy Franks.
On his 23rd birthday, Feb. 28, 2003, Sgt. Justin W. Garvey was sent to Iraq. He joked to his mother about the Army giving him a birthday present of "an all-expenses-paid trip to Iraq."
Since the invasion of Iraq started in March, 246 American troops have been killed. The British government has reported 43 British deaths in the war. On or since May 1, when President George W. Bush declared that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended," 110 U.S. soldiers have died, including Garvey.
The number of U.S. casualties was particularly high last week. One soldier was killed Monday in Baghdad when a grenade was dropped onto his vehicle from an overpass. Another soldier died Sunday south of Baghdad in an attack. On Saturday, three soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division were killed in a grenade attack on a detachment that was guarding a children's hospital outside Baghdad. In a separate battle the same day, a soldier was killed near Abu Ghraib prison.
And on Thursday, three from the Army's 101st Airborne Division died in a night attack in northern Iraq. Among them was Pfc. Raheen Tyson Heighter, 22, of Bay Shore. He was assigned to field artillery and, like Garvey, was based at Fort Campbell, Ky.
The battles in which they died were similar and tell the story of most of the recent deaths of U.S. soldiers. They were on patrol, or guarding a building, or traveling in a convoy, when they were suddenly hit by guerrilla fighters using a combination of small arms, low on technology but no less deadly. On July 20, Garvey and another soldier he was riding with, Sgt. Jason D. Jordan, 24, of Elba, Ala., became the 231st and 232nd American soldiers killed in the war in Iraq. Two days later, the count continued as another U.S. soldier, Spc. Jon P. Fettig, 30, of Dickinson, N.D., died when his truck was hit with rocket-propelled grenades.
Garvey wrote to his mother regularly about all the grateful people he had met in Iraq. He said they needed his help, that he was glad to be there. She didn't care. She wanted him home.
His enlistment was to end July 18. But because of the war, his discharge date was moved back a month. His mother, Angie Walsh, had already bought the decorations for his welcome-home party. She bought ribbons and colored lights.
His wife, Katie, was waiting for him in the couple's house in Oak Grove, Ky., near Fort Campbell. They wanted to move to New Hampshire, have children. He wanted to go to college with the money he had saved, maybe go to dental school.
Anticipating his discharge, Garvey had saved up all his leave time so he could get out ahead of his July discharge date. Had the United States not gone to war, he would have been home in May. The cruelty of the timing bothered Angie Walsh. After July 10, she started a countdown to her son's new discharge date of Aug. 15. In a letter, Garvey told his mother the rest of his unit had to stay in Iraq until at least November, that he was "one of the lucky ones." Walsh began to plan an all-day barbecue at her home in Townsend, Mass., for his homecoming.
"If you didn't have someone over there," Angie Walsh said, "you could have pretended to yourself that the war was over, that no one was still there fighting. But I knew it was more dangerous than ever ..."
When his truck was hit, Spc. Jon Fettig was traveling between Balad and Ramadi with his unit of engineers who built bridges and transported cargo. Before the war, he worked at the Wal-Mart in Dickinson. In an interview with the Associated Press, his wife, Cody Fettig, said Jon died a hero. "He died doing what he loved," she said, duplicating words spoken by Fettig's father, Larry.
The simple sentiment is not a comfort to all those left behind.
"My feelings have never changed," said Amy Herrgott, the older sister of Pfc. Edward J. Herrgott, 20, from Shakopee, Minn., who died July 3. Herrgott, who belonged to an armored division, was shot in the neck by a sniper while on foot patrol near a museum in Baghdad.
"I've always thought they shouldn't be over there," Amy Herrgott said. "My parents can't think that. Otherwise he would be over there for nothing."
The deaths of brothers and sons might not have changed views of the war but they have made them more complex.
"I felt like we should be there," Angie Walsh said. "I also know we're losing a soldier a day. Before this I would have said we either need to get more people in there or pull everyone out ... I'm not going to begin to imagine I've got the answers.
"Right now, I prefer to curl up in a corner and cry until I can't cry any more. But I want as many people to know what an amazing human being my son was."
Justin Garvey was buried Monday in Fair Haven, Vt., next to the grave of Ron Walsh.
Newsday.com - The Fallen Return to Tears of Grief and a Proud Salute
God Bless America God Bless The President and please God,Bless Our Troops!
