by Bill Sweet
He was on the brigade staff in the operations department when I got to know him in 2002, and I was in the same boat. Operations is the holding pen where they put young officers waiting to join a line unit. Your goal upon being assigned to operations is to find a way out. The the front line is where you want to be. In a platoon you're in charge, out on your own, raising hell on the countryside. In the staff you're at the bottom of the barrel. You write reports. You get coffee. All on some major's schedule. In the rear with the gear. It sucks.
We both timed it wrong. Two bad rolls of the dice. When the orders came down for war, all positions froze to focus on preparation. About five years ahead of me in his career, Eric was eagerly awaiting a company command. I was waiting for a tank platoon. Half the time I felt he was taking his frustration out on me, giving me shit for my handwriting, how my uniform fit, and my clearly substandard haircut. When he was promoted to captain I had to call him "sir" and I lost the ability to punch back without risking court martial.
Our prayers were answered soon after hitting theater. He took command of his own Engineer Company while we were still in Kuwait in early 2003. I heard the news and I remember feeling good for him. It was where he belonged. I was assigned to my tank platoon a few weeks later and our paths diverged. He went north, and I went south, both of us in the thick of things. New leaders in combat.
On January 2nd, 2004, nine mortar shells fell into FOB Eagle where Eric's company was garrisoned.
Shrapnel from one of the rounds took his life. Cut him down in his prime. Leveled the mountain.
He was buried at West Point ten days later. He was 28.
Four months later, I came home. More importantly, I was able to bring all of my guys back safely. Not all of my friends can say the same. I married, was promoted, left the Army, bought a house, ran for Chamber of Commerce president. Tried to be a leader like my friend was in my memory. I'm 35 today, and it's strange that Eric will always feel older.
Four months later, I came home. More importantly, I was able to bring all of my guys back safely. Not all of my friends can say the same. I married, was promoted, left the Army, bought a house, ran for Chamber of Commerce president. Tried to be a leader like my friend was in my memory. I'm 35 today, and it's strange that Eric will always feel older.
I often wonder what Eric would have done after the war. It's deeply unfair and awful that we didn't find out. We know that he was special, accepted to be a professor at West Point halfway through our tour. The Army chose him to teach the next generation of leaders. Those who knew him best "thought someday he would be a US Senator."
During dark times, it haunts me that I'm here and he isn't. I feel a strange and complicated guilt of surviving an ordeal when a better man did not. I lived through probably two dozen mortar attacks. For a while I didn't need to set an alarm because hot shrapnel rained from the sky every morning between 4 AM and 5 AM. While Eric enjoyed the theoretical safety of a large base, I spent most of my time in Iraq at higher risk in a small Forward Operating Base in the middle of nowhere. I spent my nights sleeping on a tank and was safe from shrapnel exploding on the ground, while Eric slept in a tent. There's really no reason outside of blind, dumb luck that I made it through and his roll came up short.
In great contrast, we live in a place where we don't have to worry about mortar rounds dropping in from the sky or bags blowing up on the side of the road. Eric's sacrifice hits me at two specific moments: when a stranger walks up to me and thanks me for my service, and every time I'm at a baseball game singing along with a few thousand watching our flag waving in the sunshine, forever free. When I shake the well-meaning stranger's hand I feel his grip crushing my hand, and when the crowd erupts I can hear his big hands clapping.
Eric is not alone. Gary Coleman, Dale Panchot, Jose Mora, and Brian Faunce, Phillip Esposito, and Lou Allen, to name a few, went with him. We owe it to them to live good lives, to love and take care of each other, and do something with this time we were given while theirs was taken away.
To make their sacrifice worth it. For them, and for us.
