It’s humbling to stand here today in the company of so many brave men and women,

and the people who love them. It’s an honor to join you in reflecting on those who
have given their lives in the service of our nation.

It is because we served with so many who had so much to offer that we speak, that
we tell the story of those who fell next to us .

Shortly after 911, I was allowed to join the United States Army Reserve. Over the
next 9 years I had the great fortune of being allowed to serve our nation around the
world as a medic, most recently with a very small team of combat advisors
embedded with the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police.

That left me as the sole medic for my team, which was usually no more than 9 men,
about 60 miles away from the nearest American force, and usually as the sole
qualified medical provider for 50,000 of the poorest people in southern Afghanistan.
I was honored to serve.

And was honored to serve with men I count as giants of our nation. 

That includes men like SFC Sterry Kimball, a 140lb old man made of steel wire, and
without fear, and MSG Fenumiani Illalio Jr. (Numi to his friends), an actual giant. 
Imagine a Samoan version of Refrigerator Perry but with body armor and lot of
guns.  The man’s shoulders are like continental plates, and the only thing bigger on
this man was his heart.

Being called “Doc” by these men, by the heroes of our nation, will remain among the
greatest honors of my life. It was Numi that handed me my Combat Medic Badge,
that’s the one that tells the world: “I’m Doc, and I’ve been there.”

He handed me my CMB in a little red folder, and told me I couldn’t wear it in country
because the Taliban might see it and try to kill me.

I didn’t wear it and they still tried to kill me.

That said, our nations’ enemies have killed a whole lot of our warriors over the
centuries and that is why we gather here today.

It would be traditional for me to talk about well-known fighters like Crispus Attucks,
the very first member of the United States Army to be killed in the service of our
nation…

…or Texans like Freddy Gonzales who posthumously was awarded the Medal
of Honor for his actions in Vietnam, but I’d like to talk, instead, of those brave men I
knew who gave their lives for a higher cause.
Men like SFC James Bullard, who died in 2008, right along Highway 1, in the
southern part of Zabul province in Shajoy district.

I lived on the Forward Observation Base bearing his name during much of my stay
in Afghanistan. FOB Bullard was only about 30 meters wide and 70 meters long, but
it was home.

About a week ago, another American, SFC Self, was killed there, right outside my
home, reminding me that our fight there is far from over.

While we celebrate those Americans who fell in combat, I can’t help but remember
my other brothers in arms who have died in that eternal struggle of good vs. evil, of
freedom vs. oppression.

For example, Haji Mohammed was the Afghan National Police Chief for Shajoy.   I
worked with him on a daily basis as a member of a Police Mentor Team and went on
countless missions with him and his men.

Unlike the vast majority of the police chiefs in southern Afghanistan, there were no
deals with Haji Mohammed. You couldn’t pay him off, you couldn’t threaten him.

He counted himself as one of the “true jihadists”.  That is, a man bound by honor to
protect his people, and nothing would persuade him away from that.

He had been shot by the Taliban on 7 different occasions and survived countless
assassination attempts, because he protected his people, including me.

This last fall a Taliban thug walked into a crowd in Shajoy and got close enough to
succeed where so many others had failed.  Along with the 16 other men, women, and
children around him, Haji Mohammed was killed.  He died serving his nation, and
ours.

Rafi was one of our team’s interpreters.  He was young, very early 20s, and always
laughing.  I can’t say I ever got his jokes, but he was a happy guy and loyal beyond
words.

Rafi was an essential member of our team and the first one I ever treated.  The
Taliban laid in wait, letting members of the Afghan National Army and members of
our own team drive by before triggering an IED to hit Raffi, because he was our
interpreter, a very high value target.

I put stitches in his hand and neck. It wasn’t too bad.  He had a concussion and the
shakes for a good week but he got over it and continued to pull missions with us.
Rafi was not an American, but an educated Afghan from Northern City of Mazar i
Sharif who was disgusted by what he saw from the Taliban, and came down south to
take his country back from them.

I asked him once if he wanted Afghanistan to have a democracy like America.  He

said no, that he just wanted an Afghanistan where people could choose what they
wanted, and he was willing to die for it.

This man had never heard the words “give me liberty or give me death” but he
understood the value of freedom a heck of a lot better than most Americans ever
will.  And he knew the sacrifices made for freedom.

In the late summer of 2009, during the search of a small village, Rafi somehow got
separated from the team,  Numi tracked Rafi down just in time to see a Taliban thug
beheading him.

Rafi gave everything for his country, and he gave everything for freedom.  On this
day, remember him.

While we honor the dead on this day, our thoughts and our prayers are also with
those who were injured and bear with them the scars of those foreign conflicts.

Remember Specialist Dustin Brown, a replacement to the Police Mentor Team at

Bullard with me.  A fun, good looking kid and craftsman in his own right. He was an
avid hunter, and his hobby at home was making authentic replicas of frontier black
powder rifles.  He carved entire hardwood stocks by hand.  Not from kits, but
complete and by hand. They were beautiful.

We talked guns and hunting every day.  We were both dead set on him coming here
to Dripping Springs for the first whitetail season we were both home.

On his 21st birthday, an IED with over 1,000lbs of explosives went off underneath
Dustin’s truck, literally cutting the up-armored HMMWV in half.

Dustin lived, but his severe traumatic brain injury has left him with a dim quality of
life. So please remember his sacrifice and pray for him and the Brown family as they
endure.

Although nearly ten years have passed since nine-eleven, we cannot lose sight of
what happened that day and the ideology against which we fight in Afghanistan.

As Americans, we fight for freedom, both for ourselves and for those who cannot
win it for themselves.
In the process, we find ourselves in the company of those who will fight, and their
passion for their families, their country, their own freedom is just as strong as ours.

As Americans wade into those firefights, they do so in the company of the Afghan
National Army and the Afghan National Police force. During my time there, we lived
together, ate together, and watched each other’s backs.

They are my brothers in arms.  I knew many of them better than I know many of my
friends and colleagues here.  And they paid a horrific price.  I lost, on average, a man
a day every day that entire summer.

That was the average, but in reality they died in groups.  I lost 21 in one day.  I
medevac’d 100 of them in just under 4 days.

By the end of the summer, it became impossible for them to pull missions.  So many
had been killed they could barely guard their outposts.

There are a lot of stupid, ignorant stories about Muslims.  But those men had more
respect for me, as a Christian, than many Christians have for each other here.

I wrote out the Hail Mary on the door of my quarters, a steel con-ex box, since that is
where I treated the most badly wounded.  I inscribed the Hail Mary as a comfort for
the dying.

Our interpreters told them what it said, and soon the Afghans walking by my door
would reach up and touch the words for comfort.  Even as an infidel, they asked me
to pray over their dead.  I did a lot of that.

These were men who were right there in it with us, who fought running, with their
shirts open.  I closed the eyes of well over 100 of those men, my brothers in arms.  
They too, fought for freedom, with us.  And I ask that you remember them today.

And finally, on this Memorial Day, I would ask that you remember why we are over
there.  For those of us who have been there, the reasons are not vague philosophies,
they are real, they rarely cry, but they do starve, and they do bleed.

Shortly after arriving in southern Afghanistan I had a group of patients that would
change how I thought of human beings forever.

The Taliban’s Vice and Virtue Brigade had taken five young girls captive and
wrapped rags soaked with home heating oil around their legs.

Then they set them on fire.  They did this to little girls.
What horrible crime did these girls commit?  They went to school, to learn to read
the Quran.

I wish I could say that this was the worst that I would see there, that this was as bad
as human beings could get, but it wasn’t.

Never forget what these people in these distant, dusty lands have suffered, at the
hands of cruel oppressors who place more value on their own power than on a
human life.

And never forget, not for a second, that SFC Bullard, SFC Self, Dustin, Haji
Mohammed, Rafi, or the veterans here today, would give their all again to protect
those little girls, those people, and to bring true evil to justice.

Those people do not forget, and those little girls won’t forget.  The families of all of
those who have sacrificed surely won’t.

On this Memorial Day, let us remember the tragedy of each lost life and the nobility
of a life given for another.

It is in the service of that greatest love that our warriors risk it all and, in so doing,
earn our undying respect and admiration.

Remember them with me this Memorial Day, and every day after, and be grateful for
the freedom they give us.