Not Just Another American Death.

Luke Beachnaw, a Sergeant in the US Army, from Lowell, Michigan, died in Afghanistan in a fire fight with Taliban insurgents. He graduated a year behind me at Lowell High. His sister, Jamie, graduated with me. Our high school was really big; I knew Jamie, but I didn't know Luke that well, if, really, at all. My younger cousin (more brother than cousin), Jeff, was in Luke's class, and knew him better than I did. 

That said: His death is not just a American military casualty in a far off in some mid-Asian "-stan" scary nation full of things like "Taliban insurgents," "terror cells," and "Al-Qaeda operatives". He was a home-grown, corn-fed, Midwestern-er with a family who loved him more than life. He came from the place where I grew up, the place that shaped me. The place that I go home to. 

I thought of Luke Beachnaw today, this guy that I didn't really know; I thought of him crouching in the arid Afghan desert, with scrubby shrubs all around him, sand crunching lightly under his military issue combat boots, wearing a light camo uniform bearing a light olive and black colored American flag on his arm. I thought of him preparing for a patrol or talking easily, maybe about baseball or football, with the men in his unit, watching the sun creep over the jagged peaks and rise as the day went on. The high-altitude mountain air was probably crisp and cold on the day he died. 

I thought of what it must have been like for him, and his fellow soldiers in the field with him that day, to have been surprised by enemy gunfire, to hear him go down with a thud, and to run to him and try, in vain, to save his life. Who was holding his hand when he died? Who was he thinking of? When was the moment that he knew he was going to die? Did the man who shot Luke Beachnaw look him in the eye in his gun sights before he pulled the trigger?

When his family was told that their brother, son, cousin, nephew, faithful friend was dead - did the Earth disappear beneath their feet and seem to swallow them whole?

His service to my country can be described in only one succinct word: brave.

Even though I didn't know Luke Beachnaw, I think I can understand him. The two pictures above were taken by the Grand Rapids local NBC news station as his casket was brought back to Lowell, our hometown. Welcome home, Sergeant. Rest in peace.