A Letter from an Officer to His Sister

As I prepared for my brother’s memorial, I started looking for pics and all things Darrell. I found a stack of letters that my brother sent to me that I kept from college that my mother had preserved all these years later. I am certain I did not understand the full significance of what he wrote then nor do I now, but I knew enough to hold onto his letters. When I packed up my belonging from college, most of my papers stayed at my parent’s home for safe keeping.

In a letter postmarked December 1994, addressed to me at my Colgate mailbox while I was a sophomore in college, I shared these words from my brother at his memorial service from page two of a nine page typed letter.

“As it turned out, I got my platoon a week before we actually deployed. I was shocked. I wanted a platoon and I didn’t. I never worked with these guys before and I didn’t know what they were capable of. I was pretty confident in my ability to lead. This wasn’t the first time I had. Also, Ranger School had embedded a sort of numbness in me. That really caused me to care less about my personal well-being. I could charge a hill by myself without a second thought. But in the days leading up to our deployment, I got to know the men some. But the Images that always stayed with me were those images of the wife and her newborn baby coming to the Battery to say her last goodbyes. Then I realize these men actually had a life. They were far from the heroes that one reads about in fairytales. They didn’t want to go, but uncle Sam said go. 

These were the images that stayed in my mind as I worked 16 and 18 hour days. Four days straight. The days were filled with intelligence meetings, course of action meetings, decision, meetings, and meetings just to have meetings to discuss when the next meeting was going to be. I thank God that he gave me great subordinate leaders. They realize that I was unfamiliar with the ways that light division worked and how the battery and platoon as a whole worked – so they stepped right in and took up the slack. The stress was high: facing war and having a new platoon leader, so I didn’t go into the platoon fired up, ready to go, and changing things right and left. I tried to maintain my composure as best as possible, and trying to keep everything as methodical and routine as possible.”

This is the briefest summary I could give of his character and heart in his own words. My brother lived life this way, in the military and beyond. Always leading and giving with others in mind.

Thank you Darrell for living a life of excellence, sacrifice, and commitment. Even from the grave, you continue to teach me things. Well played, brother.

“Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.””

‭‭Mark‬ ‭12‬:‭29‬-‭31‬ ‭NKJV‬‬