The loved ones of American veterans killed in Ukraine are reckoning with the meaning of service under one flag — and sacrifice under another.
The two military officers, crisply attired in blue dress uniforms, ascended the front porch of a single-family home. One clutched a vinyl case containing an ornate white urn and, within, the ashes of Army veteran Andrew Peters.
Survivors of those killed say the decision to trade the relative safety of home for a cause in a country not their own was inspired by the same democratic ideals that undergird service in the U.S. military: love of liberty, disdain for tyranny. Sometimes the choice was influenced, too, by a desire to escape personal turmoil, or a lust for action.
“I could see that being a disaster waiting to happen or cause some grief with people who probably have no business speaking their mind,” he said. “It’s amazing, concerning the circumstances,” Paul Maimer said. “There can be some closure. At this point that is all that we can ask for.”In Mobile, Ala., the mother of Cooper Andrews, a retired Marine Corps sergeant killed around Bakhmut on April 19, is fighting to have her son’s remains brought back to the United States.
“They just couldn’t grasp the idea that he could want all kinds of knowledge and still just be a person,” she said. Reflecting on the loss of his friend and others to the war in Ukraine, Turner said that every U.S. veteran killed in Ukraine “absolutely, 100 percent sacrificed for what we believe in, which is our freedom and democracy. … There is no distinction.”
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