North by Northeast

I didn’t know Andy, but he joined the Army and I have a lot of respect for that. I’ve seen a number of mentions across the interwebs over the last few days about an Army blogger who had been killed in action and for whom a friend had posted his “If I die” post. I had been avoiding it, just knowing it would depress me. Tonight I read it:

Major Andrew olmsted’s Final Blog Post

You should read it. It’s not terribly depressing. It’s a fitting final statement. Maj. olmsted also wound up blogging at Rocky Mountain News. The described his mission as “his mission is to teach members of the Iraqi Army how to defend their country and provide security for their people.”

His friends in his unit described his untimely demise as thus:

“They were pursuing some insurgents,” Casey’s brother, Jeffrey, said. “Major Olmsted got out of his vehicle and was pleading with these three individuals to stop and surrender so that the team would not have to fire upon them and kill them.”
“Unfortunately, there were snipers in the area, and apparently that’s when Major Olmsted was hit,” Jeffrey Casey added. “He didn’t want to kill these individuals. He was trying to save their lives.”

After the gunfire erupted, Thomas Casey went to help Olmsted, thinking that the three suspected insurgents were responsible for the shooting, his brother said.

“That’s when he took his bullet,” Jeffrey Casey said. “The fact that a sniper round caught him in the neck . . . that’s just one of those fluke one-in-a-million shots.”

That’s how I would expect a blogging soldier would go out: trying to do the right thing in a tough situation.

PS-if you haven’t read the post yet and your wife is named Amanda, it may be a little tough to read the part where he says goodbye to his wife Amanda.