Memorial Day

Remembering Our Fallen

Captain Bill Jacobsen, 31, KIA 12.21.2004

Sergeant First Class Paul Karpowich, 30, KIA 12.21.2004

1st Lieutenant Will Edens, 29, KIA 4.28.05

Corporal Steven Candelo, 20, KIA 3.26.2008

These are the first soldiers I think of on Memorial Day.

I shared an office with Bill in the month before we deployed from Fort Lewis, Washington. Bill was a few years senior and mentored me upon my arrival to the Lancers, 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, while we both served on Brigade Staff. He was amazingly kind an patient. He was killed in a suicide attack that killed 21 soldiers. One I sometimes think would have killed me, if I hadn’t left my Battalion tactical operations center late that morning. He left behind a wife and four children.

Paul died in that same suicide attack. Paul was an activated U.S. Army Reservist supporting our unit. We hit it off because he was also the son of immigrants with roots in Eastern Europe. Paul was survived by his wife.

Will died in an improvised explosive device ambush that destroyed his vehicle while he was on patrol with his platoon. He very bright and super happy-go-lucky guy, always smiling and in good spirits. He would fill a room with positivity. Will left behind a new bride.

Candelo was one of my youngest troops when he arrived to my company. I remember a particularly tragic incident not too long before the combat deployment where Candelo had to take emergency leave to go home and help his kid sister. Candelo’s father was reported as undocumented and was being deported. Candelo and his sister had been born in the U.S. to parents who had arrived to the U.S. decades before. Some jealous neighbor reported their business resulting in their father’s detention and deportation. When Candelo was killed, his father was barred from coming to the U.S. and attending the funeral. A system this unforgiving and broken, where a soldier citizen is killed and his parents cannot come to his funeral is in desperate need of repair.

Memorial Day kicks off the unofficial start to summer. To most Americans it’s a day of family get togethers and barbecues. It is also a somber day to remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice in service to our nation, defending us against tyrants abroad and insurrectionists at home. Our rights and freedoms have been secured by their sacrifices. Without the sacrifice of these brave Americans, the United States and the world as a whole would be in a much darker place.

For me, Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is a beautiful reminder of the meaning of Memorial Day.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.

It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863

Memorial Day is a reminder of the cost of liberty. It reminds me of the sacrifice of those that have come before me and renews my commitment to defend our great nation.