Remembering the colleagues we lost: A veteran's Memorial Day reflection

This Memorial Day, as our nation pauses to honor those who gave their last full measure of devotion, I find myself thinking not of abstract statistics or distant battlefields, but of the faces, the names and the laughter of the colleagues I lost along the way.

I enlisted in the Air Force as an explosive ordnance disposal technician in 1979. For more than three decades, I served in uniform, from the flight line to the cockpit of the B-1 bomber, from squadron command to wing command, through nuclear operations and multiple combat deployments. Along that journey, I buried friends. I stood at attention as Taps echoed across cemetery lawns. I watched as folded flags were placed into the trembling hands of widows and children. Each loss carved a permanent mark on my soul.

Some fell in the skies over Iraq and Afghanistan. Others were taken by the hidden dangers we faced every day as EOD techs, improvised explosive devices that turned routine missions into final ones. A few were lost right here at home on Sept. 11, 2001, when American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon. I survived that day. Many of the men and women I worked side by side with did not. Their names are etched on the Pentagon Memorial, and they remain etched in my memory.

These were not faceless casualties of war. They were the sharp young airmen who showed up early for shift change, the pilots who flew wingman on my toughest missions, the NCOs who taught me lessons I still carry today. They were husbands, wives, fathers, mothers and friends who answered the same call I did: to defend this Republic and the Constitution we swore to support and defend.

GOLD STAR PARENTS LAUNCH OPERATION 300 IN HONOR OF SON WHOSE LIFE WAS LOST IN AFGHANISTAN

Memorial Day is not Veterans Day. It is not about those of us who came home. It is about those who did not. It is about the empty seat at the dinner table, the missing voice in the squadron ready room, the child who will grow up only knowing their parent through stories and photographs. It is about the sacred debt we owe to every Gold Star family that carries a burden heavier than any rucksack we ever shouldered.

In an age when some would rather forget our history or rewrite it to fit modern sensitivities, I refuse. The service and sacrifice of every American who died in uniform, from the Revolutionary War to the mountains of Afghanistan, deserves our unapologetic gratitude. They did not die for political parties or fleeting causes. They died for the idea that this nation, imperfect as we are, remains the greatest force for freedom the world has ever known.

To my fellow veterans: Take a moment this weekend to speak their names out loud. Tell your children and grandchildren who they were and why they mattered. To the families of the fallen: know that we remember. Your loss is our loss. Your grief is carried by every one of us who wore the uniform.

And to the American people: honor them not just with parades and cookouts, but with the quiet resolve to live lives worthy of their sacrifice. Teach your children the value of duty. Stand up for the principles they defended. Support those who still serve and those who bear the invisible wounds of war.

This Memorial Day, I will once again visit memorials and gravesites. I will salute the fallen as I have for 46 years. And I will whisper a silent thank you to every colleague I lost, men and women who proved that freedom is never free.

They gave everything. The least we can do is remember.