That Little Black Band

As part of a military family, the POW (Prisoner of War) and KIA (Killed in Action) bracelets are something I easily recognize.

A couple years ago, I realized that not everyone knows what they are. One morning, a college professor visiting Germany for a class asked me if I had been to the club the night before. Apparently, the clubs near his university use black bands to identify those old enough to drink. I was caught off guard, and once I showed him the three names that were engraved on it, you could tell he was caught off guard.

Many wear these bracelets as a way to honor those they have served with or those they knew that died in service to our country. Recently, I was heartbroken when I had to order a new bracelet, not because I had lost my bracelet, but because another name was to be added. With that being said, each person who wears these bracelets generally knows the story behind the name printed on what seems like such a simple piece of metal. Today, I would like to share the stories of the four listed on my bracelet.

Sgt. Jamie O. Margins: KIA April 15, 2002

I didn’t personally know Jamie, but I learned who was through his “little sister.” I know that his favorite drink was lemon drop shots, because every year for many years when we went out on the date of his death or on his birthday, there was always a round ordered and drank in his honor

Jamie had been in the Army since 1997 and was an Explosive Ordnance Disposal tech. He was 27 when he was killed while trying to disarm ordnance in Afghanistan. He is one of four soldiers killed from my hometown of Derby, Kansas, and the post office in our hometown bears his name.

Spc. Joseph F. Herndon II: KIA July 29, 2004

I went to school with Joe and Melanie, his high school sweetheart, who later became his wife. Joe was a hometown hero in high school as a football player and was the type of guy that would give anyone the shirt off of his back.

I learned of Joe’s death while at work. His best friend worked with me. Joe was supposed to be the best man at his wedding in just a few months. He disappeared for a while. After checking on him, I found him on the fire escape. He looked at me and said simply, “It’s Joe. He’s gone.” It wasn’t until a couple of days after his funeral, which was held in the high school football stadium due to attendance, that I happened to come in contact with a soldier he served with. I then learned more about the soldier that Joe was.

How he had put himself in harms way to save this soldier, which resulted in him being shot himself.

How he loved his wife so much that when he didn’t have enough money to pay for a ticket for her to come to visit and the other soldiers knew he wouldn’t take a handout, they bet him the amount he needed that he wouldn’t drink a bottle of spit chewing tobacco, which he did.

He was 21 when he was killed by a sniper while on guard duty in Iraq. He was the fourth soldier from Derby, Kansas, to be killed in action. The VFW in Derby is named in his honor.

Sgt. Evan S. Parker: KIA Oct. 26, 2005

Evan is another soldier I didn’t know personally but have learned about through conversations with his mother. In the fall of 2010, his mom had a trip scheduled to Germany. During her time there, she was scheduled to visit Landstuhl, which was where Evan died from the injuries he sustained on a dismounted patrol on Oct. 23 near Balad, Iraq.

During the course of the weeks leading up to her visit, I learned more about Evan. The jokester he was, stories of when he was younger, and even stories of the soldier he was. I felt like I had known him and asked her permission to add his name to my bracelet, which she quickly agreed. When she arrived in Germany, I met her for the first time. The rest of that day was a deeply emotional situation. As we visited the Fisher House, which is where she stayed, a picture of Evan greeted us in the entrance. The next stop on our visit was to the actual hospital. As we walked through the halls she had walked five years before, the emotion was overwhelming. Then we arrived at our destination within the hospital. The room in which he had his last breath.

As her husband and I stood outside the room, we knew there weren’t words that could make this better or even easier. In that moment, I truly saw the pain of not just losing a soldier but of her having lost her little boy.

Sgt. Peter “Chris” Bohler—KIA Dec. 17, 2013

Tomorrow will be the memorial for Chris and four other members of the Combat Aviation Brigade from Fort Riley. This hit very close to home. This was within my husband’s brigade, but even closer because both my husband and I served with Chris.

I first met Chris when I arrived in Germany. We were assigned to the same company together—Delta Company. Since the majority of the brigade was deployed at the time, we didn’t have any aircraft to work on or tools to work on anything with, so we did a lot of sitting around and just shooting the you-know-what. He was a jokester and someone who you could always count on to bring a laugh to the group.

It wasn’t long after that when we would both find our way to a flight company. Chris went to the VIP company, and I went to the MEDEVAC, but our companies shared the hangar floor. As our company prepared to deploy, I found myself in the other company’s crew chief office almost daily to borrow supplies. Soon, I started getting hassled from Chris and some of the other crew chiefs about what they were going to get out of supplying our company with all this stuff. Knowing that most of them were single soldiers, baked goods started becoming the trade.

It was about a month after I got back that Chris and his company would deploy. Fast forward, as I was walking through Walmart right after we arrived at Fort Riley and I was very pregnant, I got a very weird look from a soldier that I knew—it was Chris. My husband and he would find themselves in ALC together, then deploying again within the same brigade. I was there the day Chris deployed and remember the look he gave me when I kept trying to get a good picture of him. I remember telling him, “Don’t you think your mom would want a good picture of you?”

Looking back now, I wish I would have made him stand still so that the only picture I had from that day wasn’t that last one of him in formation. Chris was 29 when he was killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan less than a month ago.

It’s easy to see those little black bands and not know the story behind them, not know the face that goes with them or the family who lost them. Those simple etchings of a rank, name, date, and operation tell an amazing story of someone who, to that person wearing that band, will never be forgotten.