David Jeffers

He Was My Hero
November 11, 2008

If a boy is lucky enough to have a father whose great desire is to be a hero to his son that young man can consider himself blessed. In this day of absentee fathers a boy is lucky to even have a father at home much less him be a hero. But what of the father whose son is his hero? How is it that a father can look upon his own son as his hero? Such was Sergeant Eddie Jeffers to me; he was my son and he was my hero.

I remember before Eddie ever graduated from high school one summer while he was visiting me in Germany (he lived with his mother in Alabama) he told me he was thinking about joining the Army. I asked him why and he said that he knew he needed some discipline in his life and that he wanted to serve his country. Then came the real shocker; he said, “Dad, if I do go in I’m going all the way; I’m going Infantry. No need to half-step it.”

I asked why he considered the Infantry and he said that if he made the commitment to join then he wanted to commit to going to the front lines and be where the action is. Understand that this was not from some grand illusion of winning medals or becoming a war hero, it was a sense of duty that Eddie had; he wanted to serve his country.

When the attacks of 9/11 happened he became more interested in fighting terrorism even though I had assured him of a four-year stint at the University of West Florida to pursue a journalism degree to become a writer. However I could see the tug of duty calling on his soul; Eddie was born with a warrior spirit and what is so often the case with war heroes that characteristic is not present in them when they are little boys. Many times they are “momma’s boys” and Eddie was no different. He was a momma’s boy through and through and although he wasn’t a sissy by any accounts, he loved his mother and they had a special relationship much like mine with my late mother.

Once Eddie made the decision to serve he joined the Infantry as planned and went into the reserves at first but eventually went on active duty. He served his first permanent party assignment in Korea and then when his brigade was withdrawn from the Demilitarized Zone they were sent to Iraq and eventually ended up in the hotbed known as Ramadi in the Al Anbar province.

Eddie survived his first tour but not without the protective hand of God through angels miraculously saving his life on at least two occasions. In one particular close call he and his buddy looked down at a dud RPG stuck in the ground in front of them and Eddie looked up to heaven and said “Thank you Jesus” and then smacked his buddy in the chest and said, “Stick with me dude, I got lots of people praying for me!”

And he did, more than any of us actually know. After about 15 months in Fort Carson, Colorado Eddie’s unit was redeployed to the exact same spot in Ramadi, Iraq. But this time it was completely different for him. Not only was the change apparent because now he wasn’t just some young private trying to stay alive, he was now a team leader, a sergeant leading “his boys” into combat.

But even more was different this time around. America was different; it was becoming more apparent to him and his buddies that the country’s support of the war was slipping and the anti-war sentiment was reaching them in Iraq. In his now famous “Hope Rides Alone” first published here at NMJ and copied thousands of times around the Internet, Eddie wrote:

And to think, I volunteered for this...

And I am ignorant to the rest of the world...or so I thought.

But even thousands of miles away, in Ramadi, Iraq, the cries and screams and complaints of the ungrateful reach me. In a year, I will be thrust back into society from a life and mentality that doesn't fit your average man. And then, I will be alone. And then, I will walk down the streets of America, and see the yellow ribbon stickers on the cars of the same people who compare our President to Hitler.

I will watch the television and watch the Cindy Sheehans, and the Al Frankens, and the rest of the ignorant sheep of America spout off their mouths about a subject they know nothing about. It is their right, however, and it is a right that is defended by hundreds of thousands of boys and girls scattered across the world, far from home. I use the word boys and girls, because that's what they are. In the Army, the average age of the infantryman is nineteen years old. The average rank of soldiers killed in action is Private First Class.

Eddie would later write two more articles, “Freedom Feels Good” and “Real Deal in Ramadi”, and although they did not receive the notoriety of “Hope” they were more evidence of Eddie’s natural writing gift. All Eddie desired of America was to allow the military to finish the job, as he wrote in “Freedom Feels Good”:

But more than anyone, I sometimes see futility in my actions. I fight, I kill, I scar myself emotionally, psychologically, and in some ways physically...and as I lay in the dark at night, I wonder what it's for. I wonder if the Iraqi people will ever get it together or if the country will collapse on itself whether I am here or not. It makes me angry, and a big part of me is content to let it fall apart. Part of me doesn't care what happens to this God-forsaken city after I leave it...as long as “me and my boys” make it out in one piece.

But that is the viewpoint of a man who wishes his actions to be in vain. I do not. I have lost very close friends over here. I don't want their lives to have been given in vain. Simply put, we are fighters. We are all in the same place for various reasons, for me, it's personal. I am in a modern day crusade to exterminate evil. People whose atrocities I cannot even begin to name cannot be allowed to exist among us. As long as these people are here, everything that is just and good is at risk.

I told people that my son and our soldiers could die in vain if the Democrats and President-elect Obama get their way and these are not just my words, but words of a hero who lived and breathed this not only once for a year, but twice in a second tour that lasted more than a year.

My son’s great wish after hearing that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had declared that the war was lost was that surely Americans would punish the Democratic leaders for their disparaging words. Obviously just the opposite happened. An outcome of the principle of unintended consequences of those who voted for Barack Obama and many other Democrats as a way to “punish the Republicans” or “to teach them a lesson” or for whatever reason, you actually rewarded the bad behavior of the Democrats towards our military by giving them more power. And you have emboldened them.

I lost my hero on September 19, 2007 on the desert floor of Taqqadam, Iraq in a vehicle rollover. As much as I miss Eddie part of me is glad that he is not alive to see what has happened in our country, the country he loved so much and considered an honor for which to fight. I have a feeling that he, like many of the military I work with each day and teach, that he would have wondered what happened.

Today is Veteran’s Day. Many Americans said “never again” that we would as a country mistreat our veterans the way we did when they returned from Vietnam. And while many, many wonderful Americans remember our beautiful vets every single day, America as a nation has forgotten. We have a housing crisis, a financial crisis, an auto industry crisis, a new president, a new direction; we have change.

Something else we have America. We still have the finest Americans, of whom many of you are not worthy of their sacrifice because of your ungratefulness, deployed in harm’s way. There are so many heroes, past and present that we need to remember today and thank God for their selfless sacrifice, those who “gave the last full measure.”

As a veteran I am grateful for honor of serving my country with so many great men and women.

As an American I am grateful for all the veterans who have made our country great through their blood, sweat, and tears.