Veterans, old and young, remember sacrifices on Memorial Day weekend

May 25—Lt. Adam Rodriguez said he can remember holding his breath in a desert in Iraq on Memorial Day in 2022, watching as an enemy rocket soared through the air above him, knowing death was on the table but remembering an oath he took to protect and serve at all costs.

This Memorial Day weekend, the Army veteran said he will relax and play some golf, and he wants all citizens to realize how much sacrifice it took to enjoy freedoms like those.

"The most important thing you can do on Monday is enjoy your freedom in this country and know that it was bought by some very precious blood," Rodriguez said. "I would bet everything I have that soldiers who have died would want you to go and just have a good day."

After graduating from Decatur High School in 2016, Rodriguez took the oath of office and was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Army in 2020. He was sent to Army Ranger School at Fort Benning, Georgia, now known as Fort Moore, in 2022. Graduating from Fort Benning, he was then stationed at Fort Drum, New York, with a light infantry unit known as the 10th Mountain Division.

Rodriguez began his first deployment in May 2022 at the Al-Asad Airbase in Iraq, where he served as the platoon leader for the quick reaction force unit. A few weeks after landing, Rodriguez said he witnessed an enemy rocket traveling inbound on his position.

"The terrorists really like to do things on anniversaries or American holidays, so we'll go into a heightened state of readiness," Rodriguez said. "On Memorial Day, we got a pretty intense rocket attack from a 122-millimeter Katyusha missile."

Rodriguez said his unit did not suffer any casualties, but a soldier with the Iraqi Security Forces suffered what was believed to be a traumatic brain injury during the attack.

"We were on standby, getting ready to go recover some drones, and my commander called me and said there was a situation update," Rodriguez said. "After I walked out of the command post, I was walking back to the trucks to radio everyone to tell them what we're going to do and then I heard the rocket whiz right over me. In that moment, I was like, 'OK, here it is.' After a nanosecond, I heard the impact on the other side and thought it was my lucky day."

Returning to the United States in December 2022, Rodriguez relocated to Fort Moore in June 2023 where he is currently the executive officer of an experimental infantry company. He will be promoted from lieutenant to captain next month.

In addition to remembering fallen soldiers, Rodriguez said their families, known as Gold Star families, should be recognized, too.

Rodriguez said while he was stationed in New York, he met a Gold Star mother whose son was killed overseas several decades ago.

"I guess her grief never ended," Rodriguez said. "She and her family had a lot of respect for the battalion he was in, so every year they would come and talk to us."

He said to honor their son, the family purchases food for the soldiers in his old brigade each Thanksgiving.

"I think that is a testament to her son's death and how she chose to grieve over that decades later," Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez said in previous battalion units he has served in, they would recognize the fallen soldiers of that battalion on the Thursday before Memorial Day weekend. — Vietnam veteran

At Veterans Memorial Park in Priceville on Wednesday, retired Sgt. Maj. John Johnson gazed at the black granite monuments honoring Morgan County veterans killed in combat and closed his eyes.

"This here is sacred ground," Johnson said. "I could have been on that wall. That's how close I came."

Johnson, a Hartselle resident, enlisted in the Army in June 1964, after graduating high school in Conway, North Carolina. He was sent to Schofield Barracks in Hawaii for training and later deployed to Vietnam in January 1966.

Johnson, 77, served in Vietnam from 1966 to 1969, and during that time he earned four Purple Hearts. He received one of them along with the prestigious Silver Star Medal after a firefight he was involved in at an Army Advisory Military Assistance Command post in Vietnam, where he was the heavy weapons infantry adviser.

Being faced with death many times and undertaking the pain of losing soldiers under his command, Memorial Day has a special meaning for Johnson.

"You expect that, in combat, not everyone is going to make it, but you do your best to train them to survive," Johnson said. "I lost a few and they still haunt me sometimes. In my dreams or nightmares, whatever you want to call it. I remember their faces."

After his deployment, Johnson married Helen Wright of Hartselle and the couple had four sons, one of whom was killed in a car accident at the age of 22.

Johnson is now the commander of Disabled American Veterans Chapter 11 based in Decatur, chaplain of the Combined Patriotic Organization, and the pastor of Hartselle Holy Church of Christ. He said he has spoken with many Gold Star families over the years.

"I know some and have worked with some and I've prayed with them," Johnson said.

"We've lost a son, too, and you cannot replace that at all. Every day we miss him and the Gold Star mother even more so because now they are being recognized because they lost their child. You can see it in their eyes and facial expressions, the sadness and loneliness. You see all of it."

Despite his sacrifices, Johnson said he would "do it all over again."

"Only this time, I wouldn't get any more Purple Hearts," Johnson laughed. "I would keep my head down."

— wes.tomlinson@decaturdaily.com or 256-340-2442.