Of his only son, Kevin Addison has only memories to hold close, and some dogtags.
Addison, a postal worker from Decatur, doesn't leave home without those dogtags around his neck, nor without a badge on his shirt that bears a photo Spc. Jamaal R. Addison.
"It's part of my uniform," said Addison, 53. "I don't go anywhere without them."
Addison is among thousands of Americans -- and hundreds of Georgians -- who lost a family member to the conflict in Iraq, a war that is officially over.
These fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers will look on the end of the Iraq war with different eyes than the rest of us. The war may be over, but their loss will not end.
Between March 23, 2003, and September 29 of this year, 143 Georgians sacrificed their lives in Iraq. Each one is remembered in memorials big and small, maintained by friends and family members and by an appreciative nation. This is the story of only a handful.
The first: Spc. Jamaal R. Addison
On March 23, 2003, only three days after U.S. and allied forces launched a coordinated invasion of Iraq, Spc. Jamaal R. Addison's 507th Maintenance Company took a wrong turn and drove into an ambush in the city of Nasiriyah. Addison, 22, was among 11 soldiers killed by enemy fire. He was the first Georgian to die in the war.
His mother, Patricia Roberts, now 51, ran into financial straits after Addison's death. She had adopted his toddler son, also named Jamaal, and was tending to her elderly mother when she was faced with eviction from her Lithonia condo. A group of Atlantans created a fund to help put Roberts -- who is divorced from Kevin Addison --in a new house, where she has now lived for more than a year.
In honor of her son, Roberts created the Jamaal Addison Motivational Foundation, which provides mentoring services to children.
As a child, her soldier-son was quiet, studious and loved video games, she said. "He was amazed by plants and trees," she said. "He wanted to read and learn more about everything. He was inquisitive about how the earth moved, what made things, why did the wind blow the way it did. At the age of 4 he would say things like ‘Do you know how many flaps it would take a bird to fly from the north to the south?'"
Schoolwork came easily to Jamaal, and his immersion in Nintendo and Mortal Kombat led to an interest in computers, said his mother.
He was a member of the JROTC at Lakeside High School, yet after graduating he found himself looking for a direction, said his father. "He was a young man at a crossroads," said Kevin Addison.
The military offered him the focus he needed, said his father. Jamaal took basic training at Fort Benning, in Columbus and studied computers at Fort Gordon, in Augusta.
"You could see the transformation," his father said. "He was becoming a man before our eyes."
Spc. Addison was stationed at a U.S. base in Korea for a year, then was assigned to the 507th Maintenance Company based out of Fort Bliss, in El Paso, Texas. He married in Texas only a few weeks before deploying to Kuwait.
"I could feel that he was afraid, but he never said it," said Roberts.
In their last conversation, he told his father to be on the lookout for a used ‘91 Honda Civic, which he planned to restore when he returned stateside.
"He was a great kid, a great guy, and I don’t say that just because he was my son," Addison said. He keeps a room at his Decatur house for memorabilia from his son, including plaques, awards and a foul ball that they caught at a Brave's game
Now, he said, "I try to get on with this business of life. That was my child. I loved him like any father would love his son. I have to be left here to pick up the pieces."
The most: Alpha Company
The war in Iraq reached a turning point in the summer of 2005. Despite successfully holding free elections earlier that year, Iraq was still torn by sectarian violence.
More and more, insurgents used improvised explosive devices against US. soldiers, and Americans were discovering the defensive limits of their armored vehicles.
"That was the pivotal time of the conflict," said Lt. Col Mark London, who was operations officer for the Georgia National Guard 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment, 48th Infantry Brigade. "We had moved into an area west of Baghdad, it hadn’t been patrolled that much and we didn’t have Iraqi army presence or police presence out there."
The area was a Ba'ath stronghold, he said, full of soldiers loyal to Saddam Hussein, including Hussein's son Uday, who had a farm nearby.
Then, in a one-week period during July, one platoon of the 48th Infantry Brigade, based in Valdosta, was struck twice by roadside bombs. The blasts killed four soldiers from Alpha Company on July 24 and four more on July 30.
Like most Guard units, the brigade was made up of civilian-soldiers, many in their 30s and 40s, who had peacetime careers as engineers, doctors, farmers and attorneys.
The four killed by the first bomb were:
Sgt. John Thomas, 33, a construction worker from Valdosta;
Spc. Jacques "Gus" Brunson, 30, a grocery store butcher from Sylvester;
Staff Sgt. Carl Fuller, 44, a warehouse supervisor from Covington;
Sgt. James Kinlow, 35, a truck driver from Thomson.
The four killed by the second bomb were:
Spc. Jonathon Haggin, 26, a security guard from Kingsland;
Staff Sgt. David Jones, 45, a jailer from Augusta;
Sgt. 1st Class Victor Anderson, 39, a sheriff's deputy from Ellaville;
Sgt. Ronnie "Rod" Shelley, 34, a bakery supervisor from Valdosta.
"They train to fight wars, but the paradigm has changed," London said. "Not only are we fighting insurgents but we're trying to win over the people and give them something." For example, he said, a group of engineers under his command repaired a broken generator, bringing light to one village.
Back home, Alpha Company's losses were a deep blow for South Georgia, home of most of those killed, who came from towns such as Kingsland, Augusta, Ellaville, Valdosta, Sylvester and Thomson. The men had known each other for years, and their commanders knew their families.
"When a mother asks you to take care of her son, you’re going to see her when you come back," said Maj. Brian Lasseter, whose command included the Alpha Company platoon.
"The true test of those soldiers, those that survived, is that they kept going," said Lt. Col. Jeff Dickerson, battalion operations officer. "They were even more determined . . . they never wavered."
The last: Spc. Adrian G. Mills
At Adrian Mills' graduation from Northgate High School in Newnan, the speaker introduced him and four others who had enlisted, saying they had "put themselves in harm's way." They were greeted with a thunderous ovation.
By that point, "A.J." Mills had already been practicing to be a soldier for years, as a member of the Civil Air Patrol and the Northgate JROTC.
Three months ago, harm found the 23-year-old military policeman. Spc. Adrian G. Mills, with the 272nd Military Police Company, 519th Military Police Battalion, was at his base in Kirkuk when he was killed on Sept. 29 by debris from enemy mortar fire.
He was apparently the last Georgian killed in the war.
As a high school student, A.J. could be found at the drag races, watching monster truck rallies, shooting targets or rebuilding old muscle cars. "He liked everything from pen knives to pup tents, to hot wheels, to camo wear, to boots," said his stepfather, Jeff Bleschmidt. "He was definitely all boy."
Though Mills wanted to fly helicopters, he shifted his attention to the military police when he found that MP jobs were more plentiful. Bleschmidt, an Air Force veteran, encouraged that practical approach.
He also encouraged Mills to help others. Mills was perhaps 15 when the two were watching news coverage of Hurricane Katrina and decided to drive a truck full of supplies to the coastal areas ravaged by the storm. With the help of Mills' JROTC class they delivered 28,000 pounds of supplies to a Baptist church in Mississippi, Bleschmidt said.
Mills met his future wife Sandra, a German native, when he was stationed in Heidelberg.
"He liked spaghetti, chili and his mom’s homemade chicken pot pie," said Bleschmidt. Saying goodbye to Mills was "the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my whole life," he said. "He left here last Christmas and went to Fort Polk the week before he was deployed. I got upset, he said ‘Don’t worry Jeff, I’ll be back.'"
But this Christmas Spc. Mills didn't come home. "I love him, I miss him, I wish I could have him back," said Bleschmidt. "And every chance you get, hug your kids and tell them you love them."
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