He was always playing soldier. Jason McDonald would join his cousins prowling Taylor County back yards, make-believe rifles ready to shoot make-believe bad guys, little boys stalking adulthood.
No one was surprised when McDonald joined the U.S. Army a decade ago, walking into the recruiter’s office in Macon and asking where to sign. He was 18, ready to fight.
His fight is over. On June 9, McDonald, a native of Butler, was killed in Afghanistan. A staff sergeant in the Army’s Special Forces, McDonald was among five casualties. Federal officials say they may have been victims of friendly fire.
Death by friendly fire — “fratricide” is another term the military uses — is not rare; other troops in this war and others have been the unintended targets of deadly force. But the deaths of five troops by friendly fire may be the highest in a single event since the war in Afghanistan began in 2001.
The deaths also highlight a war that seemingly just won’t end, despite plans to wind down U.S. involvement in the conflict. President Obama recently said American troops in Afghanistan will be reduced from 32,000 to 9,800 after this year, with the last troop removed by 2016.
McDonald, 28, leaves a wife and two daughters, 4 and 2. He also leaves a mother who’s struggling with that cruelest of realities: She’ll have to bury a son. That’s not the way nature intended it.
Linda McDonald Mathewscq remembers the moment her son told her he was leaving home. “He told me, ‘Mama, they’re coming to get me,’” said Mathews, who now lives in DeSoto, midway between Americus and Cordele in South Georgia.
McDonald excelled as a soldier. He trained at Fort Benning, taking on increasingly demanding duties. In his last deployment, he was a staff sergeant assigned to the 1st Battalion, 5th Special Forces Group from Fort Campbell, Kentucky.
The Department of Defense announced late Saturday night that McDonald was among five killed June 9 in a battle in a remote part of Afghanistan. They came under attack from Taliban forces and called in an airstrike to repel the attackers. The strike may have zeroed in on the wrong targets. The incident is still under investigation.
Also killed were Staff Sgt. Scott Studenmund, 24, of Pasadena, California; Spc. Justin Helton, 25, of Beaver, Ohio; Cpl. Justin Clouse, 22, of Sprague, Washington; and Pvt. 2nd Class Aaron Toppen, 19, of Mokena, Illinois.
When she got the news of her son’s death, Mathews called her sister, Kathy Harris. Harris was asleep when her phone rang; it was late Saturday, maybe early Sunday. When she said hello, Harris said, she heard Mathews screaming.
“She said, ‘He’s dead! He’s dead! ” Harris recalled Monday. “I said, ‘Who?’
“But I knew it was Jason.”
Because he was in Special Forces, McDonald didn’t always tell his family where he’d been, what he’d done, Harris said. But she said her nephew died doing what he loved.
“If you were to ask him if he would do it all over again, he’d say, ‘Yes, I would.’”
When Dustin Roland got the news that McDonald was dead, he was surprised. He’d played baseball with McDonald — McDonald, he recalled, had a good arm; could fire a long ball from outfield to home. He assumed his boyhood friend would return.
“He never gave anyone a problem,” he said.
His mother, meantime, is readying for a trip to Fort Campbell. The Army has scheduled a memorial service for McDonald on Wednesday at his old base. She’s also filing away memories: Jason as a baby, a boy, a man.
He was born a week before Christmas 1985. When she came home from the hospital, she placed him under the family Christmas tree. “An early gift for me,” she said.
When he was a boy, he went on make-believe patrols, or rode an imaginary horse across an endless western range. “He was always playing Army, or he was a cowboy.”
When he was a man, the soldier explained why he bore arms in far-away places. “He told me, ‘Mama, I’ve given you your life. I’m fighting for your life and the lives of others,’” Mathews said.
“Jason was so special,” she said. “He was a soldier on earth. Now he’s a soldier in heaven.”
Funeral details are incomplete.
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