COLLEEN KENNEY / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Tuesday, July 26, 2005 7:00 pm
What's the hardest thing a soldier can do? Jason Palmerton asks this question before entering the Army.
It's just after Sept. 11, and the young man from Auburn wants to make a difference.
Be in Special Forces, Army people tell him.
The Green Berets train to handle anything. They go on the most dangerous missions.
But very few soldiers make it, maybe 1 percent who try.
Jason tells his mom, who lives in a yellow, one-story farmhouse a few miles outside of town.
Denise Brown is surprised.
He's muscular and tall. Six-foot-1. But he wasn't into athletics. He'd won medals in speech and debate at Auburn High. He'd had leads in school plays and talked about being a standup comedian.
But she knows he'll make it.
Sunday morning, Denise sees two men at the front door of the yellow farmhouse.
They're wearing Army uniforms.
They knock.
Denise doesn't want to answer.
January 2003: Jason arrives at Fort Bragg, N.C., to train to become a Special Forces communication sergeant.
Of the 1 percent of soldiers who make the Special Forces that year, Jason finishes in the top 10 percent.
He works at Fort Bragg in radio and computers. He's a whiz like that.
The guys he works with become brothers to Jason, an only son with three sisters.
One night, he and his buddies go to a party. He meets a girl. It's a formal ball for the veterinary school she attends.
He asks for her number. She gives him a fake one.
But there's something special about this big handsome guy with the great smile.
She gives him her real number.
He calls and calls and leaves messages until she finally calls back. He knows what he wants right away. Her. She's not so sure.
She's afraid. He wears the Green Beret.
But he has this aura that everything will be OK. He walks into a room and makes her and everyone else feel comfortable and happy.
They become inseparable. And she sees how much he loves his job, how he wakes up with a smile.
I'm making a difference, he tells her. I can't imagine doing anything else.
He becomes the first man she's loved.
He finds out he'll be going to Afghanistan in June. They take a week off and go to a North Carolina beach.
He proposes on the sand, and they decide to marry when he returns in February.
She's going to finish vet school and do her residency wherever he'll be. He's going to finish college and get out of the military. Maybe become a police officer or enter the FBI or CIA.
I want a son, he says.
I want a daughter, she says.
But that's up to me, he reminds her. I have the chromosomes that decide.
They want a photo to remember this moment on the beach.
No one is around. So Jason sticks out his arm and points the camera back at them.
They are laughing.
Tuesday morning, Shelley Austin looks at this photo of her and Jason on the beach.
It's her favorite now.
The 27-year-old from North Carolina arrived here at his mom's yellow farmhouse at about 3 a.m. that morning. Her sister, a doctor, came with her for support.
Jason got shot six weeks after arriving in Afghanistan, Shelley says. He was on patrol near the town of Qal'eh-Yegaz. He came under fire. He got out of his vehicle to return fire. He got shot just above the clavicle. Shelley's sister told her that means the bullet probably hit a major artery and that death came quick. He was 25.
Shelley flew here to help comfort his mom.
Denise hasn't been able to sleep or eat.
She's been remembering his last visit home at Christmas. Questioning God. Throwing up.
"It's like a horrible, horrible nightmare and you can't wake up."
With Shelley, Denise got out the old photo albums.
There's Jason as a baby. Jason in speech and drama. Jason in his Army dress uniform. Jason with his sisters, Amanda and Beth and Chelsey.
His father, Steve Palmerton, lives in Auburn, too, with Chelsey, Jason's half-sister. He has grandparents. Herman and Alice Moenning live in Lincoln. Tom Palmerton lives in Brownville.
All of them wait for word on when his body will return from Afghanistan so they can make funeral arrangements.
They know Jason, if he were here, in this yellow farmhouse this morning, would be trying to make them smile. Telling a good joke.
Telling them he was meant to wear the Green Beret.
But still, they cry.
Because this is the hardest thing a soldier's family can do.
Reach Colleen Kenney at 473-2655 or ckenney@journalstar.com.
Military deaths with Nebraska connections
As of Tuesday, 23 U.S. service members with Nebraska connections have died in Afghanistan and Iraq since the beginning of military operations following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to the Department of Defense and family.
Latest Nebraskan to be killed, according to the Department of Defense:
Previously reported by the Department of Defense or families:
SOURCE: The Associated Press