There will be parades and marching bands. Flag-waving and wreath-laying. Politicians will make speeches, friends will raise glasses and civilians will observe moments of silence. All to honor America’s service members, now and forever.
But for those who have lost loved ones overseas in the Iran war, which has been waged since Feb. 28, this Veterans Day comes with a heaviness that only military families can fathom, and that will grow only more difficult as they face their first holiday season without their sons and daughters, siblings and spouses.
“Veterans Day is very different now,” said Charles Simmons, the father of Master Sgt. Tyler Simmons, who died in a refueling plane crash in Iraq in March. He added: “It takes on a whole different meaning because it’s come home. The bell tolls for thee.”
Mr. Simmons said that he and his family “have a profound sense of pride” for all of his son’s accomplishments. But above all else, he said, there is “a profound hole in our hearts.”
“I’m a selfish parent,” he said. “I would rather have my son. My child was sacrificed to save the country. That sounds noble. But in the grand scheme of things, who wants that? I don’t think I know anyone who would just willingly volunteer their child’s life.”
Mr. Simmons is one of many people newly navigating mixed feelings of grief, pride and anger, and a yearning for answers about the deaths of their relatives in a war that has left at least 23 service members dead and nearly 900 injured.
Here are reflections of three families as they honor those they lost.
Ensuring a connection
Marching at the annual Veterans Day parade in Fayetteville, N.C., was once a point of pride for Mia Swinton, an Army veteran who met her husband, Sgt. Michael Swinton, while they were deployed in Bahrain in 2020.
But instead of going to the parade this year, Ms. Swinton will visit the grave of her husband, 30, who was killed over the summer by flying debris during a controlled detonation of an Iranian drone in Iraq.
“I served my country, I deployed as well,” she said, “and then my husband was serving, and I was proud of that. But it’s just different now.”
Ms. Swinton said she was feeling angry lately, primarily at the U.S. government, over her husband’s deployment. Their 4-year-old daughter would still have her father. He also had a son from a previous marriage.
But Ms. Swinton also said Sergeant Swinton was proud of his service and loved his job. She laid out the Army flag and the American flag immediately after uniformed men called to tell her that her husband had been killed.
Her 4-year-old heard it all. And at school, when the toddler recently saw a police officer fly a drone, she couldn’t help but ask her mother: “Is it a good drone or a bad drone?”
Days before Sergeant Swinton died, he became pessimistic about his return home, Ms. Swinton said. He told her and his ex-wife that he wanted to make sure his children were taken care of.
Ms. Swinton said she wanted to fulfill that promise; last month, Sergeant Swinton’s children took a cruise to the Bahamas with their mothers, where the siblings bonded.
“We both just want them to know that they’re connected through Michael,” Ms. Swinton said. “They are each other’s link to their dad. We both feel like they were robbed.”
Closing the distance
In the months since Capt. Ariana G. Savino, 31, died in the same refueling plane crash in Iraq as Sergeant Simmons, her parents have felt a pull to move to Puerto Rico. That is where they buried their daughter, who felt as much pride for her Puerto Rican roots as she did her military career.
As soon as Captain Savino’s parents boarded their flight home from San Juan, P.R., to Kent, Wash., near where their daughter was raised, Omayra Linse said that she and her husband “already knew it was a mistake to be leaving” their buried daughter behind.
After spending the past few months packing up their lives in Washington, they settled into their home in Puerto Rico on Oct. 28, Captain Savino’s birthday. Memories of their daughter surface everywhere on the island, especially at the beach, where her parents say she sought refuge.
When military officials gave Captain Savino’s family the option of burying her at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, they decided to pursue the arduous process of trying to get a memorial marker there for their daughter instead and burying her at the place she called home.
The Linses planned to spend Veterans Day in Central Florida, where many of Captain Savino’s friends live. In January, the last time Captain Savino’s parents saw her alive, she told them she was itching to start her deployment in the Middle East so she could relieve others.
“It’s so personal now,” Ms. Linse said about this Veterans Day. “You think of the people that have sacrificed before us, but I didn’t have a face. Now it has a face.”
Darren Linse, Captain Savino’s father, said that he thought about how his daughter, a decorated pilot in the Air Force, had inspired other young people to serve.
“It’d be nice that people don’t simply remember how she died,” Mr. Linse said. “You want people to remember how Ariana lived. She packed an extraordinary amount of life into 31 years. She didn’t just simply achieve these remarkable things herself. She helped others believe they could achieve them too.”
Seeking solace
For Mr. Simmons, the father of Sergeant Simmons, Veterans Day is the beginning of a series of events and holidays at home in Columbus, Ohio, that will be defined by the absence of his only son.
“It’s bittersweet because every time there’s a new event, it’s sweet, and we’re glad that he’s being honored,” he said, “but it does reopen the wound again.”
Sergeant Simmons had wanted to be a pilot since high school and began training in 2017. His father was amazed the first time he took off, flew and landed a plane about 70 miles from Columbus to Dayton, Ohio.
He enjoyed the structure of the military and wanted to become a boom operator instructor, someone who guides students through refueling fighter jets. Eventually he wished to become a commercial pilot for a major airline.
Sergeant Simmons loved being in the air and would send his father photos of the sky.
Mr. Simmons said his son died doing what he loved, but before his deployment in February he told his father he had a premonition and believed he might not make it back.
Today, Mr. Simmons wrestles with many unanswered questions about the crash that killed his son. And lately, he has thought about whether the war was necessary and whether his son’s death was worth the possibility of saving the lives of many others in the future.
He was “so overwhelmed” at one point, he said, but he writes music about his grief, seeks refuge on his motorcycle and leans on his Christian faith.
“The same God that I trusted to protect my son, now I have to trust to heal my heart,” he said. But it’s a process.
“I’ll understand it better at some point.”
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