Remembering all the heroes

Service takes many forms. So does sacrifice.

By Brian O’Neill

Memorial Day has always belonged to those who gave their lives in service to the country. It honors their sacrifice, their absence, and the burden carried by their families. We remember the fallen in uniform—because they are who we see most clearly.

This tradition of remembrance began in the shadow of the Civil War, when the scale of death demanded something collective. From Union veterans in Boalsburg, Pa., to formerly enslaved families in Charleston, S.C., Americans gathered to honor the fallen—sometimes in uniformed procession, sometimes in silence, sometimes with flowers placed on graves for men whose names they didn’t know. The commemoration was never entirely unified. But the instinct to remember—to honor sacrifice, however it came—was shared.

There are others, too. And they belong to this day as well.

Some were intelligence officers who served in the shadows and never returned. Some were civilian employees assigned to military missions, killed while supporting combat operations. Others were diplomats, targeted not for what they did but for what they represented. Some were aid workers killed while delivering relief amid war or disaster—caught in violence not of their making. And some were veterans who survived the battlefield but later died by suicide—wounds they brought back proving just as fatal as those faced in combat.

They didn’t all wear the uniform. But they served. And they fell.

At CIA headquarters, 140 stars are carved into the Memorial Wall. Each represents an officer who died in the line of duty. Some of those names—Mike Spann, Jennifer Matthews—are now part of post-9/11 history. Most are not. But all died on missions the public might never know about. And they were there because they were asked to be—and because someone had to be.

Civilian employees of the Department of Defense have also died alongside the troops they supported. Some were analysts or engineers embedded with military units. Others were logisticians or technical specialists assigned to forward operating bases or convoy routes. Since 2001, at least 21 have been killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. They were not in combat roles, but they worked in places where the line between front and rear no longer held. And when the violence came, it did not distinguish.

The State Department also honors its fallen. As of March, 321 names are inscribed on memorial plaques in the department’s lobby—marking diplomats and Foreign Service members who died while serving overseas. Their roles were civilian, but their assignments on behalf of the security and well-being of the United States carried real risk.

USAID has lost nearly 100 personnel and contractors over the decades, from Vietnam to Afghanistan—many in conflict zones where the line between aid and danger was thin. Their roles were not military. But their deaths were tied to the same mission: to support stability, represent American presence, and stand with partners in fragile places.

Then there are the veterans.

Each year, more than 6,000 take their own lives. Veterans Affairs estimates that 17 veterans die by suicide each day—more than the number killed in any single year of post-9/11 combat. These are not only stories of trauma. They are stories of dislocation, of trying to return to a country that no longer quite fits. For many families, this is the most painful legacy of service. And though Memorial Day was not created for this kind of loss, it might still be the most fitting time to acknowledge it.

This is not a call to rewrite tradition. Nothing is taken from the soldier at Arlington by remembering the others who served. The point is not to shift the spotlight. It’s to widen the frame.

Because these lives—whether lost in uniform, in civilian service, or after the battle ended—were given in the name of the same country. And this day belongs to them, too.

To remember the fallen is to stand with those they left behind. That duty doesn’t end when the flag is folded. It continues—in the scholarships granted to a CIA officer’s children, in the tutoring support for the son of a Green Beret lost on a mission few will ever know about. Organizations such as the CIA Officers Memorial Foundation and the Special Operations Warrior Foundation carry that work forward. Their mission isn’t charity. It’s remembrance in action.

This Memorial Day, we honor them all.

Brian O’Neill, a retired senior executive from the CIA and National Counterterrorism Center, is an instructor on strategic intelligence at Georgia Tech.

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