“Staff Sgt. Robert J. Miller, 24, of Iowa City, Iowa, died Jan. 25 in Barikowt, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when he encountered small arms fire while conducting combat operations.”
Miller was one of seven to die in the reputed “Graveyard of Empires” that month. His parents mourned. A reporter or two called, but they declined comment, as many understandably do. Fleeting obituaries surface in hometown newspapers. Often, they merely restate the words of the official death notice, adding perhaps a quote from a former high school teacher or coach. “He was well-liked, a good student.” And after the bugler plays the last forlorn note of Taps, the soldier’s remains are committed to the deep, history’s oblivion. For most of our fallen troops, the story ends there. Beyond loved ones and comrades, they are not even a memory.
Miller, however, would be spared the injustice of utter anonymity. His death was marked by conspicuous gallantry among routinely gallant men. When his flag-draped casket arrived at Bagram Airfield for the journey home, hundreds of fellow soldiers lined the tarmac to pay their last respects. For Miller had repeatedly exposed himself to enemy fire to save the lives of at least 20 men amid the snows of a godforsaken river valley. President Obama awarded him, posthumously, the Medal of Honor, for uncommon valor. At the White House, pride and anguish clashed like opposing armies on the faces of his bereaved parents.
Staff Sgt. Robert J. Miller, 24, of Iowa City, paid “a soldier’s debt,” as the Bard would say. So have all of the fallen in the “forgotten war” amidst Afghanistan’s desolate peaks. But in conflict’s perpetual winter, the snowflakes still fall.
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