Photo By Lt.j.g. Bryan Mitchell | Hundreds of troops from at least a dozen countries attended a memorial ceremony Jan....... read more read more
CAMP MARMAL, Afghanistan – The turtle is coming home an heirloom.
For the guardian angel has fought his last fight.
And his solemn comrades found fortitude amid the grief by honoring a soldier who lived with honor and perished protecting those he loved.
Sgt. 1st Class William K. Lacey was remembered Sunday by scores who knew him and hundreds who wished to render tribute to a soldier who epitomized the highest ideals of national service.
“He died a warrior’s death, defending his soldiers,” said Capt. David Darling.
Less than two weeks before he was slated to return home to Kentucky, Lacey sprung from his bed shortly after sunrise on Jan. 4. Insurgents had struck his outpost.
“He was first on the scene,” said Chaplain David Howell. “Vulnerable and exposed but suppressing fire. “
A car bomb slashed through a section of the perimeter wall on the Nangahar province compound. At least six enemy fighters, some clad in suicide vests, were storming the base.
Lacey assumed a high position in a guard tower, and is credited with killing three assailants – two of whom wore suicide vests – before a rocket-propelled grenade claimed his life. His death marks the first combat death for Americans serving in Afghanistan in 2014.
He was the only American killed in the attack. All six of the insurgents died.
Originally from Laurel, Fla., the 38-year-old soldier was a vehicle mechanic assigned to the 201st Brigade Support Battalion, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division at Fort Knox. He was highly decorated and as experienced a soldier serving on the Afghan battlefield.
“We recite the soldiers creed and we say we live by the warrior ethos, but all too often they are just words soldiers recite,” said Lt. Col. William Jacobs. “Sgt Lacey, on the other hand, lived and died by the soldier’s creed and the warrior ethos.
“He fell on a pile of his own spent brass.”
First Sgt. Louis Steinke, who organized Sunday’s memorial ceremony aboard this sprawling outpost in northern Afghanistan, staved off his intense emotion to describe Lacey’s heroism.
“The lives he saved are countless as he defended the camp and the soldiers he cared about so greatly,” Steinke said.
Born in a military hospital in the summer of 1975, raised in an Air Force family and bred to wave away exhaustion like a pesky mosquito, Lacey first distinguished himself in the famed 82nd Airborne Division and went on to three tours in Iraq and a previous tour in Afghanistan.
“In his mind, it was always too nearly to quit. You always preserve, you always find a way,” Howell said.
His decorations include the Purple Heart, Bronze Star with Valor and the Army Commendation Medal.
“Danger was a familiar companion to Lacey, but he was often found smiling and ready to help anyone,” Howell said.
The chaplain cast his sacrifice in terms uniquely resonant with the camouflage clad audience.
“Without question or pause, he was willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause,” Howell said.
Jacobs read from a letter Lacey’s wife, Ashley, wrote for the ceremony.
In it, she describes a soldier brimming with positivity and recalls their rendezvous with fate.
Lacey and his soon-to-be bride were deployed together in Iraq when her vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb.
“He pulled me from the humvee and, as soon as we were cleared of any secondary devices, he came to my aid,” she wrote. “We then developed a bond that no one can compare. He saved my life.”
Exactly a year later they were wed.
“I spent every day of the past five years owing my life to him, and feeling so lucky to have him,” she wrote.
She also recalled the last time they spoke.
“He was happy on our video chat just a few hours before everything went down,” she wrote. “His smile and his laugh.”
Ashley Lacey also thanked her husband’s comrades for taking such tender care of the stuffed turtle Sgt. 1st Class Lacey had carried in his cargo pocket throughout his tour. His daughter, Lily, carried a matching turtle.
“I believe then he was my guardian angel and I now more so I believe that he is with me and our daughter,” she wrote.
Held in a German aircraft hangar where his iconic Fallen Soldier Battle Cross was flanked by an American and German attack helicopter, the ceremony was attended by hundreds of soldiers from at least a dozen countries.
Service members who knew Lacey only by his legacy volunteered to convert a dingy hangar into a hall worthy of reverence while others donated individual talents. A Germany-based American soldier played taps on his bugle while a German officer left every eye moist with a stirring rendition of Amazing Grace on bagpipes.
After the official party had rendered their final salute and strode out, the hangar remained silent for nearly an hour as troops from across the coalition – Belgium and Mongolian, Latvian and German, Croatian and American – stood respectfully before his rifle, boots, dog tags and turtle to pay their final respects. Dozens tore of their unit patches and placed them before his boots.
With only a few mourners remaining in the hangar, a heavy sadness still lingering and eyes still moist, Steinke carefully packed the Battlefield Cross items and the scores of patches.
Lastly, he held the turtle for a moment, paused with his eyes shut before he packed it to be reunited with its twin in Kentucky.
“Our nation is fortunate that we can still draw on immense reservoirs of courage and fortitude and character of men like Sgt. Lacey,” Howell said. “We are blessed with heroes such as him.”
| Date Taken: | 01.16.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 01.16.2014 13:51 |
| Story ID: | 119251 |
| Location: | CAMP MARMAL, AF |
| Hometown: | LAUREL, FLORIDA, US |
| Web Views: | 2,919 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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