Adam

On March 9th of last week, Adam Ray would have turned 40. Adam was the son of my West Point classmate Jim and his wife Donna. He was killed by an IED in Afghanistan on February 9th, 2010, one month shy of his 24th birthday. The administration’s cavalier attitude about the current war with Iran is raising old ghosts from past conflicts.

 With the start of yet another war, I was thinking about Adam, and the grief his family learned to live with. When the first bombs fell in Iran, my friend Jim posted this on Facebook: “Let me just say that I’m angry! As the father of a soldier killed in Afghanistan, I know the devastating horror that is about to descend on the families of these service men and women. It didn’t have to happen.”

 Jim and I both graduated from West Point in 1978. While on active duty, he met his wife Donna, also an Army veteran, and they married in 1981. Jim left the military in 1984 and went on to become a Christian minister.

 Their son Adam, one of five children, was born in 1986. He was in high school when 9/11 happened. Prior to that, he had talked about going to West Point, but when the Towers fell and the Pentagon burned, he decided he could not wait that long and soon joined the Army. While he wanted to go Infantry, the army made him a medic. After basic training and medic school, they sent him to Korea for his first assignment.

 Returning from Korea, the Army assigned Adam to Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM) in Washington State. While there, he requested a transfer to the infantry, which the Army granted and he was sent to Fort Benning, GA for Infantry training. After successfully graduating, he returned to JBLM, where the 2nd Infantry Division and other elements of I Corps were preparing for deployment to Afghanistan. In a strange twist, Lieutenant General Chuck Jacoby, another member of the Proud and Great class of ’78, commanded I Corps at the time.

 Adam deployed with his unit, the 2nd Infantry Division to Afghanistan. The first part of the tour was OK. He even returned to the States in September of 2009 for a short leave. While home, he bought a guitar that he took back to Afghanistan with him.

 On February 9th, 2010, Adam was part of a team checking for and clearing out IEDs in culverts on a road. At one of the culverts an IED was set off remotely. Adam was alive following the blast, with severe damage to his chest and neck. One of the soldiers with his unit gave him morphine, while another called for a medevac chopper. He was telling the others that he was fine when the chopper took him away. In the end, he died on the operating table in a nearby British army hospital.

 It was one month before his 24th birthday.

Jim and Donna were of course unaware of any of this. That very evening, a Monday evening, Jim was at his church for a board meeting. There was also a Boy Scout meeting going on. Two Air Force personnel came into the church and Jim assumed they were going to the Boy Scout meeting and directed them there. “No,” they said. “We need to speak with you.” He brought them into the church office and there, they told him Adam died earlier that day. They talked a bit more, and the team left.

 It fell to Jim to tell Donna the awful news. A church member drove him home and he entered the house. Jim shared with me that the worst moment of the whole ordeal was having to tell Donna her son died. When he told her, he spoke so low she could not understand him. He had to tell her three times before he could make his voice loud enough for her to understand.

 One other son, Seth, was also at home, along with their daughter Amanda and her son Chris. Their middle son, Zach, was away at school and their eldest daughter, Betsy, was living in Iowa City. Jim needed to tell the news all over again. And again. And again. Inexplicably, the Air Force personnel showed up later that evening at their house, perhaps to tell Donna. Jim isn’t really sure why they returned.

 The next day, the Casualty Assistance Officer came to their home and helped them tremendously. A few days later, they flew to New Jersey to meet their son’s casket as he arrived at Dover Air Force Base. Old friend and West Point Classmate Pete Eschbach met Jim and Donna at the NJ airport and drove them to Dover. In another twist, Jim was responsible for Pete meeting his future wife while at West Point.

 Standing on the tarmac at Dover, they waited for the plane to land. Eventually it did and two aluminum “transfer cases” came off the plane, one of them Adam’s. The transfer case is only used to ship the body home and Jim and Donna later bought a casket for Adam’s funeral and burial. During the “Dignified Transfer”, you are not allowed near the casket. You are only there to see the arrival of your family member. The escort detail took the transfer case to another building where the official autopsy took place and other activities happened. It would be days before they found out when Adam could return home for his final burial.

Eventually they held Adam’s funeral service in Jim’s hometown, Louisville, KY. The senior Army person present was Brigadier General Jon Miller, another member of the Class of ’78.

Adam’s gear arrived after the funeral, around the date of his birthday that March. Included in their son’s belongings was the guitar he bought the previous September. Dirt from Afghanistan still covered the case. That dirt-covered case provided the opening line for a song Jim finished writing four years later. *  

Jim told me he had no idea what grieving really was until Adam died. Previously, he lost grandparents, other family members, and friends. As a minister, he conducted many funerals. This was like none of those deaths. In Jim’s words, “It was like an ocean wave knocking me down over and over.” He would be driving and need to pull over to the side of the road and let the grief pass. This went on for months.

 In another comparison, he talked with me about a scene from John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath”, which, in the opening chapter, has a terrible dust storm.  I apologize for the length of the quote here, but I think it conveys great truth:

The wind grew strong and hard … Little by little the sky was darkened by the mixing dust … The air and the sky darkened and through them the sun shone redly, and there was a raw sting in the air. During the night the wind raced faster over the land …

The dawn came, but no day. In the gray sky a red sun appeared, a dim red circle that gave a little light, like dusk; and as that day advanced, the dusk slipped back toward darkness, and the wind cried and whimpered … When the night came again it was black night, for the stars could not pierce the dust.

“That,” Jim said, “is what our grief was like.”

 As I said at the start of the blog, I was thinking about Adam, Jim, and Donna when the current war started. We had already bombed the Iranian girl’s school where over 165 died, including mostly young girls between 7 and 12 years of age, but this was still before any American deaths occurred. Trump made his ludicrous statement, “The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties. That often happens in war.”  As I pointed out in an earlier blog, “No Mr President, casualties ALWAYS happen in war.”

 As the first three American deaths were announced, Mr. Trump again displayed a lack of compassion: “We have three, but we expect casualties, but in the end, its gonna be a great deal for the world. And sadly, there will likely be more [deaths] before it ends. That’s the way it is. Likely be more.”  

Note that the president went from “may have casualties” to “we expect casualties.” Those deaths were expected, but hey, it is a great deal for the world.

When the deaths climbed to six, Secretary Hegseth became involved. He resented the fact that the press asked questions about the six dead soldiers, rather than focus on the glorious war we were having. His words – “But when a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it’s front-page news. I get it; the press only wants to make the president look bad. But try for once to report the reality.”  Make the president look bad? Report the reality?

Hegseth didn’t want to talk about the reality of combat deaths, but was happy to show war footage from Iran, interspersed with clips from the films Gladiator, Braveheart, Top Gun: Maverick, John Wick, Transformers, Star Wars and Superman, along with clips from the video games, Call of Duty, Mortal Kombat and War Thunder.  

 Please, tell me again about reality Mr. Secretary. Please do. 

 Adam passed away 16 years ago. 16 Christmas celebrations. 16 birthday celebrations. 16 years gone. Yes, Jim and Donna have moved into their “new reality”, a life without Adam, where there will always be a hole. The hole grew a bit larger with the start of the war in Iran.

So far, there are at least thirteen American deaths in the conflict with Iran. They include, Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert M. Marzan, Maj. Jeffrey R. O’Brien, Sgt. Declan J. Coady, Sgt. 1st Class Nicole M. Amor, Capt. Cody A. Khork, Sgt. 1st Class Noah L. Tietjens, Sgt Benjamin N. Pennington, Maj. John A. Klinner, Capt. Ariana G. Savino, Tech. Sgt. Ashley B. Pruitt, Capt. Seth R. Koval, Capt. Curtis J. Angst, and Sgt. Tyler H. Simmons.

Defense officials recently described the number of wounded as fewer than a dozen. It turned out they were not quite forthcoming. Over 140 were already wounded at that time, including 8 seriously. The numbers have increased since then, but public acknowledgement of that continues to lag. Now we are up to 200 injured. 10 seriously.

 The American public will say “thank you for your service”. They will call those who are killed overseas, “our American Heroes.” With the glib attitude this administration and others have about the war with Iran right now, I am sorry, but both phrases sound a bit hollow to me. These deaths didn’t have to happen, but they did. To quote our president, “That’s the way it is. [There will] Likely be more.”

Please feel free to share this blog. Do it for Adam, and for those who are, or will be, casualties in our current war with Iran.

Addendum.

• My thanks to Jim and Donna for their willingness to share their experience when Adam was killed. My heart goes out to them.
• As I wrote this blog, it occurred to me how fortunate my brothers and I are in the West Point class of ’78. We take care of each other, just as Pete and Jon did here to help Jim and Donna. It is a special bond that binds us.  The Army is always extremely helpful and dignified in the handling of war dead. Having classmates involved was an extra help for Jim and Donna.
• *As I mentioned, Jim wrote a song about his son’s death. Here are the words to the first verse. You can see a link to his playing the song below.

The case is still covered with the dirt of Afghanistan.

And, never to hold you, I sit in your room 

And hold your guitar in my hands.

I want to scream out, “God, how can this be in your plan?”

But all I can say –and all I can pray—

Is, “Oh, God, help me!”

You called me your hero, Son, but what kind of hero

Lets his little boy go off to war?

To love you and lead you and guide you and teach you

Isn’t that what a Daddy is for?

They call you a hero but I’ll always see you

As my sweet little blond-headed boy.

“Oh, God, help me, now!”

• Here is a Video of Jim singing the song: https://youtu.be/M7ZMyjuV8Nc?si=Y7STspbDfCT3jTkY
• You can read my previous blog about the war in Iran here:  “The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties. That often happens in war”, said our president about our latest attack on Iran. […] Continue here: https://maxnhall.com/2026/02/28/that-often-happens-in-war/