When you’re flying with 11 of your brother’s life is great, it’s a lot of fun for the most part but when high octane fun, sky-rocketed adrenaline levels, competition, and the call to duty collide life can end very quickly, maybe at Mach 2. October 3, 2012, Middle of nowhere, Pakistan a brave group of fighter pilots were on a routine patrol of the area surrounding a Pakistani Resistance base and a U.S Embassy when they are showered in fireworks. These “fireworks” are actually surface to air missiles and our pilots are trying to avoid those best they can, but 8 fail to do so. After that faithful day in 2012 6 fathers had lost a son, 2 lost their only son, 1 lost his only child, 5 wives were widowed, 4 children were left fatherless, 3 brothers
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The phone rings and it was the number from the base that my brother had always answered, my grandmother answered and told him to wait a minute before she heard the man’s voice and called me to answer it saying “someone wants to wish you a happy birthday” I remember answering the phone and saying “Hey Brandon” and before I could get a word out I hear “This is Master Gunnery Sergeant Thompson from MacArthur Airbase in Pakistan” he asked to see my father. I ran to him and got him and he answered the phone through the phone we heard: “the unspeakable had happened and the locals the Marines had been protecting had turned on them and shot down your son Brandon’s plane and 3 others. Seeing his facial expression changing from excitement to confusion to anger as he throws the phone against the wall and storms outside. “How did this …show more content…
By the next day I was more upset and angry than sad or depressed. My dad told me the phone call in detail describing the tension and emotion in the call, and how he had the feeling something wasn’t being explained. We had to be in Washington D.C on October 15th for the court appeal, I still remember piling 9 people in my father’s 1957 Chevy Nomad and driving from Henderson, Tennessee to Washington D.C. We were in the car for hours and nobody had said a word when we got on the interstate, it was dead silent and the tension was definitely present. It was at least 2 hours until my grandmother broke the silence by asking how my day was going and if I had been holding up. When we got there it was surreal, it had seemed like an eternity had passed leaving home long before the sun had ever thought of coming up and getting to Washington long after it had gone down, it wasn’t like to usual feeling of going to D.C to see monuments or as a tourist it was for a grander cause. I remember the look on my grandfather’s face as he looked lost and confused with this deep trance he seemed to be in. the whole time we were there, there was an animosity in the air like we didn’t belong there and this feeling that something bad was just going to happen.
After we checked in to the hotel, my dad sat us all down in the room he and I were staying in since it was the middle room and told
The phone rings and it was the number from the base that my brother had always answered, my grandmother answered and told him to wait a minute before she heard the man’s voice and called me to answer it saying “someone wants to wish you a happy birthday” I remember answering the phone and saying “Hey Brandon” and before I could get a word out I hear “This is Master Gunnery Sergeant Thompson from MacArthur Airbase in Pakistan” he asked to see my father. I ran to him and got him and he answered the phone through the phone we heard: “the unspeakable had happened and the locals the Marines had been protecting had turned on them and shot down your son Brandon’s plane and 3 others. Seeing his facial expression changing from excitement to confusion to anger as he throws the phone against the wall and storms outside. “How did this …show more content…
By the next day I was more upset and angry than sad or depressed. My dad told me the phone call in detail describing the tension and emotion in the call, and how he had the feeling something wasn’t being explained. We had to be in Washington D.C on October 15th for the court appeal, I still remember piling 9 people in my father’s 1957 Chevy Nomad and driving from Henderson, Tennessee to Washington D.C. We were in the car for hours and nobody had said a word when we got on the interstate, it was dead silent and the tension was definitely present. It was at least 2 hours until my grandmother broke the silence by asking how my day was going and if I had been holding up. When we got there it was surreal, it had seemed like an eternity had passed leaving home long before the sun had ever thought of coming up and getting to Washington long after it had gone down, it wasn’t like to usual feeling of going to D.C to see monuments or as a tourist it was for a grander cause. I remember the look on my grandfather’s face as he looked lost and confused with this deep trance he seemed to be in. the whole time we were there, there was an animosity in the air like we didn’t belong there and this feeling that something bad was just going to happen.
After we checked in to the hotel, my dad sat us all down in the room he and I were staying in since it was the middle room and told