Master Corporal Erin Melvin Doyle

Adam Day of Legion Magazine has written an article about MCpl Erin Doyle, who died fighting the enemy in Afghanistan on August 11th of last year, that you absolutely must go and read in its entirety.

Two passages in particular stood out to me:

The enemy, nothing if not superbly unpredictable, chose to attack at the moment when more than 200 coalition soldiers were converging on Haji. In the resultant chaos, Doyle and his section were ordered to load the withdrawing platoon’s massive pile of equipment onto a truck while the rest of the convoy lay pretty much belly up in a sandstorm on the Arghandab riverbed.

Now, we’ve all moved heavy boxes before and it’s not exactly fun. Doyle was already sick—with Afghan hanta virus, as he called it—but that didn’t stop him. He jumped up and moved boxes with his troops. And he moved them way past the point where any normal person would have stopped. He moved them until he nearly died.

No, really. I’m not just saying that. He moved boxes until he passed out and his vital signs got so bad the medic came over the radio saying he was unsure if Doyle would live and requested an emergency nine-liner medevac back to Kandahar Airfield.

No one who knew Doyle is surprised by this story. Troops were in danger so he pushed past all of the body’s normal warning signs because a job had to be done. It’s just what it was.

Doyle made it back to Kandahar and with the help of a tasty intravenous buffet, he survived the day. He would not survive the war.

...

Three rockets fired from point-blank range slammed into the tower and Doyle died that day. “When he got killed we all said ‘Well, if he had to die, that’s the way he wanted to die,’” said McMichael, choking back tears. “He died pulling the trigger. He died screaming into the face of the enemy. He died doing what every soldier wants to do. If he had to go, that’s how he’d want to go, defying the enemy to the last.

“He stood against it though, you know what I mean? How many guys do you know have actually stood against evil people?” asked McMichael, gently. “He paid the ultimate sacrifice for it, but didn’t he give the rest of us hope in doing that?”

He changed the lives of those around him, for the better. He made a difference. A man could ask for no more honest an epitaph.