Someday, this war's going to end

Major (Promotable) Rob Baldwin was the senior officer onboard a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter that crashed in Deh Chopan district, Zabul Province, Afghanistan on Tuesday, 21 September 2010.

He and eight others were killed in the crash. (One of the others was LT Brendan Looney, who I remembered as a player for the Navy Midshipmen in the NCAA Division I lacrosse national title game in 2004.)

Rob sat one seat to my left in my small group at the School of Advanced Military Studies. He and I inprocessed Fort Campbell on the same day and worked in the same office before he was paroled to go down to the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade.

It's been a few months since I've seen a familiar name in the news as a combat fatality. Although Rob and I weren't extremely close friends, he wasn't just an acquaintance either. I spent the better part of 10 months with him in the classroom and for another year afterward in the G-5 plans directorate of the 101st Airborne Division.

His death really hits me close since he left behind a wife and four kids, one of whom had briefly been in the same preschool as my younger daughter. He is the second graduate of the School of Advanced Military Studies to die in combat.

Some of my memories of Rob are maddening, some are amazingly funny, but my enduring recollection of Rob was that he absolutely would not quit, even when he faced a really unpleasant uphill task. I saw it at school, and I saw it during his and my shared time in the Screaming Eagles plans directorate.

The member of my class who sat to my right in the small group sent me an email that mentioned "That makes 27." He's a special operator who has had subordinates of his who died in combat while he was their company commander, a particular hell which I've been lucky never to have experienced. His continued tradecraft in the Close Combat Industry has a lot to do with why his dead-friend-in-combat counter is over double mine.

That said, for me, that makes 12. Someday, this war's going to end. I look forward to a day when I don't see friends on combat fatality lists anymore.

Rest in peace, Rob.