Which Leif Garretson Should I Remember on Memorial Day?

When I remember Leif on Memorial Day, which Leif should I remember? The boy who wanted to grow up to be an Air Force pilot but couldn't because his eyes wouldn't pass the flight physical? The college student who joined Air Force ROTC to become an Air Force officer, scoring at the top his class at summer camp, only to be sent home when his body failed him again with a pulled muscle in his groin?

The man who enlisted in the infantry, the toughest physical challenge, to try to find a way into the military, hoping to qualify for Green to Gold to become an officer? The man who went through Infantry Basic Training on a broken foot after a fellow soldier fell on it during first aid training?

The man who breathed and ate sand and dust in Uzbekistan during UN maneuvers and developed severe asthma so that his body betrayed him yet again? The man who served his country with distinction in Bosnia as a peacekeeper? The man who was the best machine gunner in his battalion?

The proud soldier who became a broken man, the one who, with PTSD, finally ended his life like far too many of our veterans? He didn't die in a combat battle, but he died in his own private war, one brought on at least partly by his military service.

So, on this Memorial Day, I remember Leif Garretson, my son, who served his country, and is no longer with us. I will always be proud of him and his service.

This photo was taken around 1999.

Thinking of Leif

Next month it will be five years since Leif died, but he seems to be as much a part of our thoughts as ever. We still talk about him, still are reminded of him daily, still feel his loss, still smile over his humor.

We were at Bay Pines National Cemetery on March 3rd, with cousins Wolfgang and Cordula visiting from Germany. It still brings tears to see his niche and know that is all that is left of my handsome, brilliant son, all that is earthly remains, at any rate.

Oddly, a couple of days later, the beautiful Hawaiian lei which has hung over his portrait ever since the day of his memorial service, now dried and still lovely, fell off of it for the first time in all these years.

It's amazing the number of things that can remind me of Leif. I was driving to my friend Chris's house a couple of times in the past week or two and saw many feral black and white cats. That reminded me of how much Leif loved cats, and how he had tried to get close to and tame the feral kittens that lived under our townhouse in Hawaii.

This picture was one that Leif's ex wife Nikko sent to me, taken by her, one of those precious photos I hadn't seen before, and is one of a series she took of him with one of their cats. I've posted some of the others before. I still wonder who else has photos of Leif I have never seen. This one was taken while he was in the army at Fort Drum, New York on August 20, 1999. This was shortly after we had visited them there and shortly before he went to Bosnia.

So much in our lives has changed since he left us, but our love for him has not.

Leif's thoughts on infantry training and the army

Leif had such divided thoughts about the army and his military service. He was deeply devoted to our country and took very seriously his oath to defend it from all enemies, foreign and domestic. He had a reverence for our Constitution.

He was both enormously proud of his military service and very angry and how he was treated because of his asthma. He had leaders he liked and highly respected (though they are not mentioned in the piece below) and those he hated -- the ones he saw as petty dictators who delighted in humiliating soldiers, particularly his best friend; those he felt were careerists more interested in promotion than in the soldiers in the command.

His view of the army was through the lens of his unit and its operations, a micro view, to be sure, but it gives a window into a soldier's experience. Despite his biting criticism of their training (only being allowed to actually fire their weapons twice a year, for instance) and inefficiency, he was deeply proud of the soldiers with whom he served and continued to identify himself as a member of that infantry brotherhood all his life.

What made him so angry was what he continually saw as the monumental wastes of time, when he and the other soldiers had no more assigned tasks, past the end of the duty day, but were not dismissed to go home and had to just sit in the day room for an hour or hours. He hated the busywork that had them polishing floors rather than training, and with his quick mind and gift for strategy, felt that much of the training was wasteful marching rather than learning useful battle skills.

The piece below was written to his brother on February 8, 2001, in email he sent to me to be forwarded. It came in answer to his brother's thoughts on job satisfaction in the Air Force. Leif had been in the army for three years at that point and was deeply unhappy. It was during the period after he returned from service in Bosnia to find that his marriage was over, his health was ruined, and although he was the best machine gunner in the battalion (and had the awards for it) and could meet the requirements of the army PT (physical training test), he was treated abusively and denied promotion and awards because of his asthma, which made him unable to run as fast as that leader wanted his men to run. He was a deeply unhappy man when he wrote this, but it accurately reflects his feelings at the time. He was medically retired from the army a few months later.

During his service in Bosnia, he was not unhappy and he did feel they had a useful mission, and that things went much better when they did have a clear military mission. However, at that time, he still felt that mission had not been a clear benefit to the citizens of the USA or the world. I don't know whether he felt differently about it over the years. He was proud of that service.

With that background in mind, here are his thoughts from early 2001.

The photo of him was taken sitting on his cot in the first camp he was in when he went to Bosnia. I don't know who took it, but it was another soldier in his unit. The date on the photo is September 13, 1999. He was moved from camp to camp during the Bosnia duty. Because of his pose, I hesitated to post this photo, but it is surely no secret that this gesture is used, and the photo seems to fit the sentiments expressed below.

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First off, You Weenie! Oh the horror, no shower for 33 hours! Try 33 days, you wimp.

But otherwise I must say that I can in no way whatsoever relate to what you are talking about. As a member of the line infantry, or nation's first line of defense (against whatever your compadres failed to shoot down or bomb into oblivion), I have seen a lot of operations. Many, if not all, cost the taxpayer a very pretty penny. And I have yet to see or be able to say that they served any purpose other than to provide a nice bullet for some officer's OER*.

Hundreds of thousands, even millions, are spent on our training and deployments but I cannot say that we have done a single thing that truly benefited this nation or made us more prepared for war, at least not in any proportion with the monetary expenditure that said exercises required. 

From my limited experience with the Air force, I wish that they could be commissioned to reorganize/realign the army. In Bosnia we spend over a million dollars a day to operate one camp. And in seven months I could not give you one example of a day that I felt I had made a difference.

Job satisfaction? That is a concept so alien to me that I must recall the days when I was a pizza delivery driver, for I made much more difference in the quality of life of the American citizen by getting that pizza to a hungry customer On Time than I did to the people of the world as a soldier in the United States infantry.

Perhaps it is simply the fact that we exist for the sole purpose of all out war and when no such war exists there is no secondary purpose to which our leadership can divert us. Our training is contrived and artificial. Our days are an endless monotony of wasted time and an apparent inability to deal with the "difficult" tasks of peace time life, a waste that only furthers our contempt for the nature of the army. Strangely, the ineptitude of our organization in peace time does not make me fear for war. In war there is no time for career-minded ambition. No worries about the luster of the floors. No luxury of petty superiority.

When those things leave us and a real challenge arrives, we seem to posses the ability to pull together and work toward the common purposes of victory and survival. However, in time of peace we seem to lose our way and become distracted with such frivolous and meaningless pursuits as would befit a janitor or gardener, not the noble warriors that defend our great nation. Countless dollars are spent on floor wax and training exercises that teach us nothing except how to walk blindly with the confidence of a boxer that has never lost a fight. Our budget allows us to perform multi-million-dollar operations that teach us nothing and then deny us the opportunity to fire our rifles more than twice a year.

The sort of efficiency you described is simply impossible in the army. Even a rapid deployment force would take days just to prep and plan for such an operation. Our army is sick. No one on the outside can see its ailments for we proud men hide our flaws andshield our egos from the light of day. And like a proud man our army will not seek adoctor's care.

Only when it collapses will an outsider see how it has deteriorated. Only then, in our darkest hour, when this 'machine' of incompetence and misdirection has broken down will we be able to start again and build the army of tomorrow. Until then our only satisfaction will lie in the fact that no matter how flawed or pointless the endeavors that may fill the interlude between wars, we few men and women of the United States Army volunteered to defend this great nation against all enemies foreign and domestic should she ever need to call on us.

*OER = Officer Efficiency Report (job evaluation for promotion purposes)

Leif's Tenth to Eighteenth Homes - Manhattan, Kansas to Fort Drum NY and back- 1995 to 2001

When Leif left our old stone house in Manhattan, Kansas to live with Nikko, his fiancee then, they first lived in the yellow and purple house on the north side of the 800 block of Bluemont Avenue. They had a basement apartment. It seems this house, like others along Bluemont that once were nice family homes and were turned into student apartments by landlords that didn't care for the property, now seems to be boarded up and probably destined for destruction. Basement apartments in Manhattan weren't cheap. Nothing in Manhattan is, but they were cheapER, the closest thing to affordable. The apartment was unfinished, with the rock walls of the basement partly painted, but not fixed up, paneled, or anything. I don't know exactly when they moved there, or how long they lived there, but for the three years they lived in Manhattan, they lived in three different apartments, so it probably wasn't more than a year. The house was almost exactly through the block and across Bluemont from us, just over a block away, and convenient to KSU so Leif could walk or bike to classes. He was a student with part time jobs at places like the electronics department at Sears, and at Aggieville Pizza, which no longer exists. Nikko worked at a futon store in Aggieville, and later at local restaurants. I think they were married while living in this house.

When they left the Bluemont Street apartment, they moved nearly right across the street from us in the 800 Block of Moro Street, into the basement apartment there. That house was another former family home that had been converted into apartments by a landlord and had erstwhile been a "party house" with groups of students that whooped it up all night on weekends and about drove us nuts. By the time Leif and Nikko moved in there, a calmer group was living in the house. This basement apartment at least had windows that were partially above ground and could be opened. They had rock walls again, but it was fixed up a little nicer. It was still a walkable distance from KSU and Leif was still a student. To get into the apartment, the stairs went down from the back of the house, right from the yard, and they were steep and unprotected from the weather. That meant that if it snowed or we had freezing rain, they were extremely slippery and dangerous. Nikko fell down them once when they were in that condition and got terrible bruises. Luckily, I don't think she broke any bones. The landlord should have been required to cover that stairwell to make is safer.

Although the lived across the street from us, we didn't see them all that often, though they were often at our house for Sunday dinner or special occasions like family birthdays and holidays.

From there, they moved to an apartment complex on Stagg Hill on the southwest side of Manhattan and shared a two bedroom apartment with a friend to help with the rent. This apartment was a lot nicer. I remember it being on the second or third floor. If my memory is correct, this is the last place they lived in Manhattan before they got into such financial difficulties and Leif was working nights full time to try to keep up, and finally quit school and enlisted in the army.

His next "home" was Fort Benning, Georgia, where he went to Army Infantry Basic training and lived in what once were called barracks but the new facilities don't look at all like the old barracks. They are huge brick buildings. After he graduated from training he and Nikko were stationed at Fort Drum, New York and lived in a military housing area constructed in Watertown. it was a complex of apartment buildings and they lived on South Hycliff. We visited them there in the summer of 1999 before Leif went to Bosnia in the fall but apparently either didn't think of taking a photo of their building or I just can't find it.

Nikko lived there while Leif was in Bosnia, where he lived in at least three different camps. I never found any photos he took of them, but he did make a video tour of one of the bases. He was in Bosnia for seven months and returned in the spring of 2000. That was the summer that Nikko left him to go back to Kansas. Leif spent the next nine months there in misery, trying to get his asthma diagnosed and treated, sick, depressed and lonely.

He finally managed to get medically retired from the army in May 2001 and moved back to Manhattan, Kansas, where he again lived in the old stone house with us, the third time in his life, for that summer. He was in a deep depression and we were terribly worried about him and glad he was with us so we could try to help. He was one of those who should have been treated by the VA for depression and possibly PTSD, but knowing Leif, he probably never told anyone how he was feeling. Show no weakness.

He lived with us from May until August 2001, when he moved out and started school again at KSU.
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The photos are:
1. Leif in the fall of 2001, cropped from a family portrait.
2. South Hycliff Drive in the military housing area in Watertown, New York. I think the building Leif lived in is on the lower left on the corner, set back from the street.
3. The house on the 800 block of Bluemont Avenue where Leif and Nikko lived in the basement.
4. The house on the 800 block of Moro Street where Leif and Nikko lived in the basement.
5. One of the apartment buildings on Allison Avenue on Stagg Hill like the one Leif and Nikko lived in.

Leif in Uniform - Bosnia - Early 2000 - Age 25

How does that precious little boy I posted last become this soldier? How do 25 years go past so fast? I think that you can see the resemblance between the two of them.

This is a photo I found on Leif's computer, one had hadn't seen before. I don't know who took it, but it was when he was in Bosnia. He looks lonesome to me. We have some video that Leif shot in Bosnia of the areas where he served, with him narrating. It's hard to hear his voice, his laugh, sounding like he is right here with us, and yet know he never will be again.

Leif liked serving in Bosnia because he had a mission. He was fond of saying that the infantry has no mission in peacetime, other than to train for war, and that means there is a lot of "make work" to keep the soldier busy (according to him). In Bosnia he appreciated the mission and the camaraderie, though he missed Nikko and was saddened by the condition of a country torn apart by war.

Leif's Early 23rd Birthday Celebration - Manhattan, Kansas - December 24, 1997 - Almost 23

This is quite a jump, from Leif's twelfth birthday to his twenty-third, but I've already posted photos of his fifteenth birthday snowboarding in Wisconsin, and for the other birthdays in between, I either can't find photos, or they aren't good ones for the blog, so I'm having to skip all the way here.

We celebrated Leif's 23rd birthday early, because he had enlisted in the army and had to report to for duty on January 12th (see earlier post about that, with photos). Since we were all over at my mother's for Christmas Eve, she decided that would be a good time for all of us to celebrate his birthday, too.

These photos were taken there, at her house on Pottawatomie Street, and Nikko is there with him. He was a month shy of his 23rd birthday. Up until this time, we had been together with Leif for every one of his 22 birthdays, but we would miss the actual birthday this time, as he was in basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia.

We wouldn't see him for his 24th birthday, which he spent in Fort Drum, New York, his 25th, which he spent in Bosnia, or his 26th, which he again spent in Fort Drum, New York, alone. Not until his 27th birthday would he be with family again.

Leif always enjoyed the big family gatherings at my mother's house and was animated and full of fun. I'm sure he missed them. I don't know what he was thinking during this celebration, about what his future would hold. I do know it didn't turn out as he hoped, that entry into military life.

Happy Birthday, Leif!

Leif - An Award from Dad & Retirement from the Army - 2002 & 2004

Leif seldom wrote anything long, letters or email, unless it was something about which he felt a sudden and gripping passion. One evening in February 2001, when he was alone and depressed at Fort Drum, he called home and he and his dad had a misunderstanding. He broke down, the only time I ever heard him do that as an adult, hung up the phone and wrote a passionate statement about his military service. In that email, we learned for the first time about his awards, the difficulty he had experienced, and the humiliation he experienced not only from the treatment he got from some of his superiors, but from experiencing the breakdown of his health and body.

Although Leif ultimately was boarded out of the army due to medical reasons, his asthma, which became so severe that he could not keep up on marches when carrying his incredibly heavy load, and for which he was punished instead of being treated, he did not want to leave his chosen military career and felt his body had betrayed him.

The ultimate humiliation came when the army tried, as they have tried with so many vets (just tonight we heard on the news that all these years later they are finally admitting that those who had "Gulf War Syndrome" from the first Gulf War weren't making it up; they are really sick!) to insist that he didn't contract the asthma as the result of his military service, but must have had it before he entered. Luckily for him, he had his entire life's health record from military facilities from the day he was born, with no trace of asthma in any of it until after he was sent to Fort Drum. He had to appeal their decision to board him out without benefits, and appear before a board at Fort Lewis, Washington.

The final result was that the board agreed that his asthma was service-related, caused a 30% disability (which also meant that the law enforcement careers he would have liked to go into instead of the army were now barred to him as well), and permanently retired him from the army in August 2004 after being on a temporary retirement list since May of 2001.

Leif was denied promotions he deserved and denied medals he earned because of his asthma and disability, regardless of the outstanding job he did. He came home demoralized, depressed and lonely.

In July 2002, when his brother, Peter Anthony, and his family were visiting us in Manhattan, Kansas at the old stone house, Peter W. made an award for Leif, hoping to show that he honored Leif's service to his country. He put a brass plaque on a wooden base, used a branch of wood from one of our trees, decorated it with Leif's insignia and medals, and topped it with the statue of a infantryman. He presented it to Leif in front of the family, saying that if the Army didn't properly honor him, his dad would.

Leif was touched, and also bemused. This surely was one of the most unusual and personal awards a soldier ever got. The photo above is of that occasion.

At Leif's Memorial Service, the base of this award, with the brass plaque and the infantryman that had been on the top, were displayed, and some of the insignia were placed on the wooden urn that held Leif's ashes.

Here are Leif's own words:

I am an infantryman. There is a reason we get to wear the blue cord. We do what others would not, what others could not. I have done things that you could not imagine. Carried more, fought harder, endured more pain, pressed on for the mission. You have no idea what I have done. You have no idea what I have endured, what I have carried, how far I have carried it, or how little thanks I have gotten for my efforts. I would challenge you to do the same. I doubt you could.

I have served my country to the best of my ability and then some. I DID serve with honor and distinction. You have no idea what I have done or how hard it was to do it. I may have joined the wrong Service or the wrong MOS but I did my best to fulfill that job. I have suffered more pain, more humiliation, because of that choice, than you can imagine. I am now asthmatic because I would not give up. I am being thown out because my body would not abide with my will.

But I was proud to serve my country, because even if the institution was flawed at least I was one of those that volunteered to be part of it. I have served with honor and distinction. I was the top gunner at Dragon School straight out of Basic, for which I received a Certificate of Achievement. I was the best of the Guard in Bosnia on several occasions, for which I received several more COA's. I was among the best in the Catamout truck challenge, receiving another COA from my LTC.

I was the best gunner in our battalion and had the best gun team in the battalion, and probably the division, for which I also received a COA. I completed many road marches from 12 to 25 miles with full gear. I completed the 7 month rotation to Bosnia with a mission every day that could have meant life or death. These are just a few of the things that I have done in my service.

His Certificate of Retirement reads:

Certificate of Retirement
From the Armed Forces of the United States of America
To all who shall see these presents, greeting:
This is to certify that
Specialist Leif A. Garretson
having served faithfully and honorably,
was retired from the
United States Army
on the Fifth Day of August 2004

Here I will end my account of Leif's military service, which is fragmented and sketchy. We will never know all he could have told us about it, and there are some things he did tell us that I am not recounting online because they are about other individuals whose permission I do not have, or who would not be portrayed in a flattering light.

Although Leif's military service harmed him in body and soul, and I think it quite likely that he suffered from post traumatic stress syndrome, it also formed a major part of his identity, which is one reason his inability to continue because of his health was such a terrible blow to him.

The rest of his life, Leif would identify with his fellow soldiers.

Leif - Bosnia - Fall 1999 - Spring 2000 - Age 25

If you compare this photo of Leif with one taken just a year or two earlier when he joined the army, I think you can clearly see the decline in his both his mental and physical health. It's a dramatic and shocking change to me. He has gained weight, lost his hair, and no longer has that vital, energetic look he had before. I don't know how much of it was caused by the asthma, how much by being separated from Nikko and knowing they had marital problems exacerbated by the long months apart, or other factors of his army service such as the humiliating treatment he had sometimes endured.

We visited Leif and Nikko just a couple of months before he went to Bosnia, in July 1999. He had gained some weight after basic training and seemed subdued at times, but wasn't the depressed and unhappy man he was by the summer of 2000. We didn't see these photos until after he died, and we didn't see Leif until he and Nikko came back to Kansas in the summer of 2000, just before Nikko left him. I wonder if the changes in him were as much of a shock to her as they were to me, when he returned to her at Fort Drum that spring.

Leif spent Christmas 1999 and his 25th birthday on January 28, 2000 in Bosnia. We never heard how he celebrated either one, or if he did.

In the photo, he is in the gun turret of the patrol vehicle, but relaxing with a soft drink. You can see a bit of the area behind him, with the damage he told of clearly visible. Note he is wearing a flack jacket. The position Leif had on patrol was totally exposed. Luckily, he was never fired upon, but if he had been, he would have been a big target.

The certificate is for the NATO medal. It reads (in both English and French):

North Atlantic Treaty Organization
This is to certify that
PFC Leif Garretson
Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 87th Infantry
Has been awarded the NATO Medal for Service with NATO on Operations in relation to the Former Yugoslavia During the Period 20 September 1999 to 28 March 2000.

The actual medal looks like the bronze medallions at the top of the page and the ribbon, which he would have worn on his uniform was the navy blue bar with silver stripes that is in the middle. This was yet another thing Leif didn't tell us about, and I found the medal in the box it came in among his things.

Leif - Bosnia - Fall 1999 - Spring 2000 - Age 25

Leif was deployed for duty in Bosnia Herzegovina from Fall 1999 - Spring 2000. He was on sentry duty and on patrol in the machine gun turret of a vehicle, and was stationed in (I believe) three different camps during the period he was there.

Leif had a receding hairline which kept getting worse, and while he was in Bosnia, he decided to just shave his head. He never went back to having hair and said that when it started to grow, it felt "dirty" to him once he was used to the clean-shaven head.

Seeing Bosnia and what hatred for another religion or ethnic group had caused there had a profound effect on Leif. As a student of history, he already had opinions about religion causing so many problems and wars in the world, but when he saw the damage first hand, it solidified his belief that religion was too often a force of terrible evils.

Leif said there was no home or building that wasn't damaged by the war there, that many were in shambles, completely destroyed, and those that were standing and in use were marked by bullet holes and other damage. He said that Bosnia was a beautiful country, and would have been a delightful place to visit had it not been for the circumstances of the war and the peacekeeping effort.

The American troops were not supposed to have anything to do with the local populace, which he also thought was a shame, but he understood the reason for it. He recounted a story in which some of his unit managed to go to a local place for a pizza, and really enjoyed it, but said they could have gotten into a lot of trouble.

He also told a story about a time when he was on patrol when they nearly shot at other Americans who were in a restricted area and hadn't let the patrols know they were there.

Leif made some videos of the camps there, explaining where things were, a kind of tour, but so far, I don't have anything to play them with, because of the format.

Leif had been very unhappy at Fort Drum, partly because he felt that soldiers in his unit were not being treated well (and sometimes very cruelly and humiliatingly) by a particular sergeant, partly because he felt they were wasting a lot of time, were kept past retreat (time to go home) without reason (just waiting in the day room for dismissal), and because he had developed cold weather asthma the previous winter at Fort Drum after having been to Uzbekistan and "eating and breathing sand for two weeks." However, he found his time in Bosnia to be far more interesting and rewarding because, as he put it, "we finally had a mission."

Leif contended that it is hard to be an infantry soldier in peacetime because there is no real mission. Yes, they have to train and be prepared to fight, but that training doesn't go on eight hours a day, five or more days a week, so there are "make work" projects and a lot of wasted time. Leif hated boredom and hated having his time wasted.

But in Bosnia, he could see a clear reason for their mission. Leif said that he felt that if the US and NATO troops left, the war would resume and people would start killing each other again. Despite the fact that he knew the USA could not police the world, he did feel a sense of pride and accomplishment at his service in Bosnia, and a sense of comradeship in arms that was much more pronounced that he had felt in the USA.

The photo of Leif above was taken while he was on patrol in Bosnia but I don't know the date. I found it in an album he had. He had never shown those photos to us.

The three certificates are from his time in Bosnia.

Certificate of Appreciation
This Certificate is Presented to
SPC Leif A. Garretson
C Col, 2nd Battalion, 87th Infantry Regiment
For dedication to duty, and service to the
2nd Brigade Task Force, while assigned
as part of SFOR-6 in Bosnia Herzegovina.

Comanche Base
Operation Joint Forge
Certificate of Achievement
Presented to SPC Leif A. Garretson
3rd Platton, C Co., 2/87 Infantry Regiment
For exemplary performance of duty while assigned as a Sentry at Comanche Base, Bosnia-Herzegovina during Operation Joint Forge from 26 December 1999 to 26 January 2000. Your dedication and willingness to put forth the extra effort in all that you do is indicative of your professionalism and desire to be the best. This achievement is in keeping with the highest traditions of military service. Fly to Glory!

The third certificate is in the language used in Bosnia. It came with a small badge or lapel pin that looks like the one on the certificate, oval, red, with crossed rifles. It reads, as nearly as I can translate it:

SPC Garretson
has earned
The Military Sharpshooter Medallion
In Bronse
Bosnia, 3 December 1999

I wish I knew how that kind of competition took place. Leif's normal weapon was the machine gun, but this was evidently for a rifle competition or qualification.

I found these certificates and the Bosnian sharpshooter medallion in Leif's things.

Leif was promoted from Private First Class to Specialist sometime between when we saw him in July 1999 and December 1999 when he got the sharpshooter award, but I don't recall that he told us about it.

We had limited contact with Leif while he was in Bosnia, just a few emails. I'm going to try to see whether they are still on my computer and whether there are any interesting details in them. It would be unusual, since Leif didn't often write much.

Leif - Catamount Battalion Awards - Summer 1999 - Fort Drum

Leif participated in battalion challenges at Fort Drum, New York, a year after he had arrived there and before going to Bosnia that fall. The two award certificates read, in part:

Catamount Certificate of Achievement
is awarded to
Private First Class Leif Garretson
for exceptional achievement as a participant in the 2-87 Catamount Truck Challenge. Your superior technical knowledge of the M998 and unparalleled driving ability set you apart as an outstanding example for all soldiers. Your ability to master a variety of skills make you an asset to the Catamount Batallion . . . 23 June 1999

Catamount Certificate of Achievement
is awarded to Private First Class Leif Garretson
PFC Garretson's machine gun team qualified as the highest in the battalion. His experience and expertise with the M240B machine gun are a credit to his team, platoon, Charlie Company, the Catamount Battalion, and the U.S. Army. 12 August 1999

The photo of him was taken about the same period. I think it was taken by Nikko, in their quarters at Fort Drum, and he is holding one of their cats.

Leif told me about the competitions he participated in for these awards, but unfortunately, I didn't write down the details. They were getting ready for their deployment to Bosnia.

Leif did not like infantry life on base when they were not training and "had no mission." He felt they wasted a lot of time and were required to do menial tasks like mopping floors instead of honing their skills as professional soldiers. He was happiest when they were training or on a mission, as they were in Bosnia. He could expound at length on how he thought things ought to be done differently in order to make better use of enlisted soldiers' time, and he resented it when they were kept late with nothing to do because higher ups weren't ready to dismiss them.

However, he had a fierce dedication to his own skills and mission, and to his comrades in arms.

Leif's Infantry Training Certificate & Supernumerary Awards

Leif talked a lot about his military service, but he never showed us any of the award certificates he received. I found them in his apartment after he died.

The top certificate is his Infantry Training Diploma, which he received for completing infantry basic training from January 22 - April 23, 1998.

The following three are awards for serving three times as a Task Force Guard Mount Supernumerary in October 1999 in Bosnia. I wish Leif were here to clarify what it meant to be a supernumerary, but as near as I can find from researching it, that would be when he was detailed to another unit (not the one in which he normally served and to which he was assigned) to either fill in for a vacancy or to provide extra support and leadership.

The third certificate reads,
Iron Rangers
1st Battalion, 16th Infantry
Presents this
Certificate of Achievement
Awarded to
Specialist Leif A. Garretson
Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 87th Infantry
For meritorious service from 1 September 1999 to 1 November 1999 while deployed to Bosnia, SPC Garretson demonstrated superior basic soldier skills by being selected for supernumerary three times. His performance has brought great credit upon himself, his unit, and the United States Army.

I wish I had written down all the stories Leif told us about his service in Bosnia. I never knew he wouldn't be there to ask about them again.

Leif - Graduation from Army Infantry Basic 1998

Leif joined the army in January 1998, enlisting in the infantry. He managed to finish the basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia with a broken foot after another man fell on it during first aid training, ironically.

He became a machine gunner and armorer, and was an excellent marksman who was given several awards for it. He served at Fort Drum, NY, and served a peacekeeping tour in Bosnia. As time goes on, I'll post more photos of his military service.