The War and Distant Memory

Yesterday, I found out that SFC Donald Eacho, of the 1st Battalion (Mechanized), 9th Infantry, was killed in Iraq by an IED attack. His name particularly stuck out because he was the training room NCO in my first real Army assignment. When I inprocessed an armored cavalry troop at Fort Hood ten years ago as a very young, very inexperienced, and IIRC, very immature lieutenant, then-SGT Eacho had been the guy to receive my files and inprocess me into the troop.

This is the first time that I've really known someone who showed up on casualty lists. If there are any reminders that the Army is at war, this is it. I think it was just a matter of time before it happened, but you never really expect it to happen.

About a year ago, two people who I'd only met in passing were killed by hostile fire in Iraq. I didn't know either too well, although I recognized their names from the casualty reports. This was different, as I had worked closely with then-SGT Don Eacho for about a year and a half, and saw him every once in a while after that when I moved off to the squadron staff.

The things I remember about SFC Eacho relate mostly to my immaturity as a junior lieutenant, but also to his patience and maturity as a junior sergeant.

He was a military modeler in his spare time. He had brought in a small diorama pedestal of a German Panther tank, and it was exquisite. I had massively (unintentionally) stepped on my crank by saying "I used to model when I was a kid." But not to that detail and certainly not to that level of skill.

A few months prior, tactical communications had come up in conversation in our weekly troop training meetings, and as the training room NCO, he was present at all the weekly training meetings within the troop. Somewhere along the line, I was telling him about a squad radio that I had seen before ad nauseaum and he told me, "hey sir, I know what a PRC-126 is." Turns out he had used them in his last assignment while he was at the 10th Mountain Division. My mistake. I learned from that, though.

But I remember him being an exceptionally capable noncommissioned officer, and while the other sergeants used to jokingly call him "Ea-cho-la" (in the style of the Ricola cough drop commercials), as the training room NCO, he was the track commander of the troop command post track. In addition to his garrison responsibilities running the troop training room, he kept the troop TOC straight (a function which many discount, until you need to send reports higher, which I personally learned as the executive officer for another troop some three years later), and was a good guy to work with.

Googling his name (since the last time I'd spoken to him face-to-face was in 1997) brought up an event that did not particularly surprise me. Turns out Don had saved a family from a car wreck a year or so before he went to Iraq and was recognized with the Soldier's Medal, the highest non-combat heroism award in the U.S. Army, for it.

I lose count of the number of noncommissioned officers whose formative influence shaped my development as an Army officer. I consider myself privileged to have served with Don Eacho. He was a good man, and the Army is worse for his passing.