Memorial Day Made Real

Lest you allow Memorial Day to pass without a proper recollection of those who have given the supreme sacrifice for you, this worn-out deployed buck sergeant is here to remind you of how personal war is. It's not statistics and politics. It's people. It's people who are not coming back alive.

This memorial day, I offer special respect and honor to

Army Staff Sergeant Brandon L. Wallace

Brandon was age 27 and was from St. Louis, Mo. He was assigned to the 1451st Transportation Company, 13th Support Command, Iraq. He died on April 14, 2007 in Fallujah, Iraq when an improvised explosive device (IED) detonated near his vehicle.

Read and weep for the fallen and his family:

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The Associated Press

FESTUS, Mo. — A 27-year-old who was scheduled to come home from Iraq in two weeks was killed by a roadside bomb in Fallujah, his family said this weekend.

Army Staff Sgt. Brandon Wallace, who had been reactivated from the Individual Ready Reserve and had been deployed since May, was killed April 14, his family said.

He was preparing to come home and marry an Army specialist he had met and proposed to in Iraq.

His father, Rickey Wallace, said his son already had served his active-duty contract for three years in Germany and Kosovo.

“In Brandon’s mind, he thought he was basically done,” Rickey Wallace said. “He was shocked that they called him back.”

Brandon Wallace graduated from Crystal City High School in 1998. He had been taking classes at the police academy in St. Charles when he was reactivated.

Rickey Wallace urged his son to ask if he could graduate from the academy before being deployed, and the Army agreed.

Robin Wallace said she took some comfort in hearing her son had died instantly.

Wallace’s parents told the Web site for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, www.stltoday.com, that they will meet their son’s fiancee for the first time next week when she brings their son’s body home.

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Do you feel that ache in your gut, the burning in your eyes, and the agony over the senseless loss for this family? How about the air that escaped when you read the last sentence of that horrible article? Hold on to that furiously mournful feeling.

That's Memorial Day.


Sergeant Brandon L. Wallace was not the only casualty from that roadside bomb. Also killed was

Sergeant Joshua A. Schmit.

Read more about some of our honored dead here.