TAPS....

My husband came home one day last week and told me that he had just heard that a Sgt Major he knew had lost both of his legs in an IED accident in Afganistan just before Christmas. The next day, he called me from work and told me that a Sgt who had been on his provisional security detail team during his last deployment to Iraq, was killed in Afganistan that day. This same Sgt was on site when the Sgt Major I mentioned was injured, and was credited with saving his life. Right now, my husband is in New Jersey, at the wake of the young Sgt, and will attend his funeral tomorrow. Next week, he will go to Bethesda and visit the Sgt Major.



So much of what is in the news seems surreal, until you can put a face to a name of one of the fallen. Sgt Hrbeck and his wife were married at our unit ball in 2007. They were with us at the restaurant the evening that I blogged about on Feb 11 of 2007. They were friends with the couple I wrote about on March 7 of the following year. My husband thought highly of this young Marine, and his passing hit my husband hard. In reading the memorial site published in Sgt Hrbeck's memory, it is plain to see that he was a fun loving, hard charging Marine. And a true hero. In their grief, I hope his family will find comfort knowing that he died doing what he loved, and that his life, though short, was a gift to all who knew him.