GRP 28- Today’s episode is a special Memorial Day tribute to our fallen countrymen from all wars past till present. There will be multiple post highlighting this episode, but the first will be an excerpt from former Army EOD Technician Justin Howard.

John Hendricks: Justin, what does Memorial day mean to you?

Justin Howard: Memorial day to me is me thinking about the veterans who served in wars past, but also the brothers that served with me. The one’s who I’ve lost. When you hear about one of your brothers being a triple amputee makes me wonder what he was thinking when it was going down.

My buddy Donald Vincent Stacy he was a good friend of mine he was with the 1 505 Parachute Infantry Regiment working with Special forces in Kandahar, Afghanistan. I was in EOD school at the time when he was deployed. I got a call from one of his buddies and he told me that Donald was killed in Afghanistan by a detonation. They had seen some Military Aged Males on some motorcycles, and they were told to go check it out. Donald took the detector from his junior guy, and went to sweep a path. As he was going down the alley a detonation occurred.

Donald was thrown against the wall, and the medic came running down. He said “SGT Stacy, SGT Stacy if you can hear me squeeze my hand, and he squeezed his hand. One of his arms was missing and both of his legs were gone. He called for assistance, and they came down and applied the tourniquets, and on the helicopter ride back to Kandahar Donald died. He was a good friend of mine from when I was 16 years old. We were in Iraq together, I was aviation, and he was infantry, but we hung out together. We were at Bragg together. That was a tough phone call for me.

Rest in Peace SGT Donald Vincent Stacy. Blue skies brother.