More than a thousand mourners honor Fort Carson's fallen soldiers

More than a thousand mourners packed two services at Fort Carson on Wednesday to remember 15 men who died in Afghanistan during the post’s deadliest month since Vietnam.

Eight of them died alongside their badly outnumbered comrades defending Combat Outpost Keating, a fortified piece of valley in the highlands near Pakistan that was virtually unknown before the fight and was abandoned afterward.

But the fighting at outpost on the morning of Oct. 3 won’t soon be forgotten, eulogists said.

“The stories that came out of that day demonstrate their service, their professionalism as soldiers and their character as men of honor,” said Maj. Dan Chandler, an officer with the 4th Brigade Combat Team, where the eight served.

The other seven were combat engineers who died while hunting for insurgents’ bombs and fighting off ambushes in central and western Afghanistan. It’s one of the most dangerous jobs in a war where insurgents prefer bombs over bullets.

“They will live on through all the lives they have touched and all the things they have done,” Capt. Jonathan Davis said of his seven fallen comrades from the 4th Engineer Battalion.

In all, 17 soldiers from Fort Carson died last month, bringing the toll to 287 for the post since fighting began in 2001.

The dimensions of October’s tragedy were evident in the faces of the mourners, who included Secretary of the Army John McHugh, who flew in from the Pentagon for the two services.

The first service honored 4th Brigade soldiers Staff Sgt. Justin T. Gallegos, Staff Sgt. Vernon W. Martin, Sgt. Joshua M. Hardt, Sgt. Joshua J. Kirk, Sgt. Michael P. Scusa, Spc. Christopher T. Griffin, Spc. Stephan L. Mace and Pfc. Kevin C. Thomson. All served in Afghanistan with the 4th Brigade’s 3rd Squadron of the 61st Cavalry Regiment.

The afternoon service was for soldiers from the 4th Engineer Battalion — Staff Sgt. Glen H. Stivison Jr., Spc. Kevin O. Hill, Spc. Jesus O. Flores, Spc. Daniel C. Lawson, Spc. Eric N. Lembke, Spc. Kimble A. Han and Pfc. Brandon M. Styer.

Eulogists described each, in turn drawing laughter and sobs from the crowd.

Justin Gallegos, 27, of San Gabriel, Calif., was on his third deployment with the Army, having served in Iraq in 2005 and 2007, during which he was wounded twice.

He was remembered as a loving father who took his duties as a cavalry scout with deadly seriousness.

In keeping with that reputation, he was dismissive the first time he met Spc. Thomas Rasmussen, then a rookie to the unit.

“He looked me up and down and turned away,” Rasmussen recalled in a letter read at the ceremony. “I knew that this was a guy that I wanted to beat and pace myself by.”

It was a fitting welcome from a man who taught his young son, MacAiden, the seven rules of reconnaissance and then brought him into the office to demonstrate that his boy could learn what some soldiers neglected.

At 25, Vernon Martin was known as a big brother to his family and to the soldiers he led, his sister, Vanessa Jackson, said after the service.

Martin, of Savannah, Ga., was a mechanic who joined the Army in 2002 and served in Iraq before heading to Afghanistan with the cavalry squadron.

He cheered people up, a precious trait in a long war.

“Staff Sgt. Martin was bursting with life and always had a smile on his face,” his friend, Staff Sgt. Damien Jefferson, wrote in  a letter from Afghanistan that was read at the service.

In his brief life, he’d also married and had three kids to love. He’d joined the Army to support his children, Jackson said.

“He was determined to be there for them, no matter what,” she said.

Just 24, California native Joshua Hardt was already a respected leader in the cavalry squadron.

“He always wanted to do the best and expected the same from his soldiers,” wrote Sgt. Bradley Larson in a letter read at the service.

But he didn’t talk about himself much.

“He always played his cards close to his chest, except when he was playing spades,” Larson wrote.

Friends, though, knew he loved his wife, Olivia, with an adoration only rivaled by his love of football and fishing.
Bespectacled and skinny, Michael Scusa seemed a less-than-imposing figure.

“He looked so young to me,” Sgt. Scott Potempa wrote in a letter read at the service. “He looked like he was wearing his big brother’s uniform.”

The 22-year-old husband and father, though, was easy to underestimate.

No one could take more pressure and still maintain that signature smile and pleasant disposition.

“He never had a bad thing to say about anyone,” Potempa wrote.

That made him the guy everyone leaned on in times of crisis, a touchstone for his friends.

“Scusa was that one solder that we could always relate to,” Potempa wrote.

Two shots of Jagermeister and a Coors beer were enough to make the gregarious Kevin Thomson smile all night, friends recalled.

The 22-year-old was that guy who makes everybody laugh with his antics. He’d argue for hours that “Ghostbusters” was the best cinematic feat in the history of Hollywood.

“To him there was nothing a blueberry Pop Tart and some nicotine product couldn’t cure,” Spc. Daniel Rodriguez wrote in a letter from Afghanistan read at the service.

His favorite phrases included “happy hour” and “all you can eat.”

“He was simple, and that’s what made him one of a kind,” Rodriguez wrote.

Kevin Hill was a hard-charger. He went to college, majoring in criminal justice before enlisting as a combat engineer.

“He was always moving and ready to get things done,” according to a letter read at the service by Staff Sgt. Kevin Case.

The New York native joined in 2008 to follow in his soldier-father’s footsteps, friends said.

He talked about someday getting out of the Army but still wanted to help his fellow citizens and often dreamed aloud of his future as a cop.

A father of three, Daniel Lawson was a seen as a spiritual leader in his platoon.

Eulogists said that he preached to his comrades but showed them to how live a life of honor and exhibited a confidence inspired by deep faith.

The 33-year-old talked his friends through the tough times in Afghanistan, calming their fears of death by telling them their fate was in the hands of a higher power.

One friend summed up his influence in a letter read at the service: “He made me a better person.”

Friends say Kimble Han joined the Army as a living tribute to a buddy who had died in Iraq.

The 30-year-old was older than most of his comrades and had a quiet determination that endeared him to leaders.

“Spc. Han was the best thing I could hope for in a soldier,” one sergeant wrote in a letter read at the service.

“The only thing that ever came out of his mouth was ‘Roger sergeant.’”

But everyone knew how much Han cared about his wife and three stepsons.

He called home after every mission to let them know he was safe.

The boost from the calls left him “with an ear-to-ear grin,” friends said.

Griffin, 24, of Sault Sainte Marie, Mich., as “strong, smart and full of life.”

The cavalry scout was ready for the enemy he faced Oct. 3. He had already completed one tour of duty in Iraq but left for Afghanistan ready for more.

“He had a fight in him that was out of this world,” Spc. Mark Dulaney recalled in a letter. “Never once did he stop and ask, ‘Why am I here?’ … He knew why he was here.”

Kirk, 30, of Colorado Springs, shared his comrade’s passion for the fight.

A team leader sometimes referred to, simply, as the “tall, crazy guy,” Kirk ran toward danger, not away from it, a friend recalled.

“He was always the first guy out the door, ready to do the job, no matter what the price,” Pfc. Christopher Jones wrote in a letter.

He showed heart off the battlefield, too. A veteran of an earlier tour in Afghanistan, he once took the time to call up Jones’ parents and reassure them that the younger man would never be more than 4 feet away.

“They felt their son was going into combat with a true soldier,” Jones said.

Mace was small-town kid from Fairfax, Va., who tattooed the initials of his family members on his back.  He always said they helped “shape him,” said Spc. Zachary Koppes.

His mother, Vanessa Adelson, said she was told her son died while manning a .50-caliber machine gun, determined to protect his outpost from advancing insurgents. He and Gallegos kept firing until they ran out of bullets and were left without a means to protect themselves.

Growing up, Mace rode dirt bikes, played football and all but ignored the injuries he racked up during his “adventures,” she said. He was the kind of boy other kids looked up to, and he had a life to match: He spent three summers during his high school years staying with a friend in South Africa whose father operated a safari business.

“He was 21, and he probably lived a bigger life and a fuller life than any one of us would if we lived until we were old and gray,” Adelson said. “We knew he probably went down like Jesse James.”

Stivison, 34, had a military pedigree: He was the grandson of an Army Ranger who fought at Pointe du Hoc on D-Day in World War II, and he grew up attending his grandfather’s Ranger reunions.

He came into his own as a squad leader in the Army, where comrades knew him as a “gentle giant,” family members said.

“He was happy to do it.  He was just glad to take charge and lead,” said father-in-law John Leaver, of Colorado Springs.

His family wore red to the memorial in a tribute to the 4th Engineer Battalion, and his sons Williams Blaze, 8, and Andrew, 6, had dog tags bearing his name hanging from their necks.

Flores — or “Flo” — was an amateur rapper who could dream up rhymes about anything, even rearranging shipping containers, a comrade said in a letter from Afghanistan.

The 28-year-old was a proud Filipino who attended high school in California but dreamed of returning to the Philippines after getting out of the Army and fixing up his childhood home.

He regaled his friends with accounts of movies and video games he had just picked up, and then offered to lend them out to be experienced firsthand, friends said.

Lembke’s nickname, Teabag, was a nod to his love of tea but also referred to what was important in his life.
Drinking sweet tea was part of a ritual that reminded him of home — namely his wife, Mashelle, and their children, Alexis and Thomas.  The family loved to barbecue together on summer days, and they enthusiastically welcomed Lembke’s friends and comrades into the fold.

The 25-year-old joined the Army in January 2008 and was deployed to Iraq a little more than a year later, where he distinguished himself as “one of the hardest workers in the platoon,” a colleague said.

Styer, 19, of Pennsylvania, was a funny, energetic bachelor who talked about girlfriends from time to time but saved up most his energy for something he valued even more: His car.

“He’d bring his laptop over to your bunk and make you look at these pictures,” a friend wrote in a letter.