The Final Roll Call
We Answer for Them Now
“Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn’t even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back.”
— Heraclitus
Roll call in combat is a sacred, heartbreaking tradition. A name is called. If there is no answer, it is called again. And again. The silence that follows the third call says everything the ceremony can’t. This page exists to answer for the names that can no longer answer for themselves.
The Fallen Soldier Field Memorial
The Battle Cross
One of the Army’s oldest traditions, the Battle Cross marks a fallen Soldier in the field: boots set at the base for his final march, a rifle stood bayonet-down in the ground standing watch in his place, a helmet resting on the stock marking where he fell, and his dog tags hanging from the pistol grip so his name is never separated from his post.
“In front of us stood the battlefield cross: his boots, his rifle stuck bayonet-down into the ground, his helmet resting on top.”
— MSG (Ret.) Jeffrey L. Haskins, IDEAL LEADERSHIP
Path of Honor Paver
PFC Joseph Patrick Mayek
1983 – 2003 · U.S. Army
His family remembers him for his love of the outdoors and fishing — the same water and woods this mission was built to give back to the men who come home. PFC Mayek was lost during Operation Iraqi Freedom, shortly after his unit secured Baghdad International Airport. His memorial was held under the Iraqi sun — a battlefield cross of boots, rifle, and helmet, and a final roll call answered only by silence. “I wear the honor of his commitment to God, country, and unit to this day,” Jeff wrote. “I miss you, my brother. And I will see you again in Valhalla.”
— from MSG (Ret.) Jeffrey L. Haskins' memoir, IDEAL LEADERSHIP
Path of Honor Paver
HM2 Anthony M. Carbullido
1983 – 2008 · U.S. Navy
Anthony Carbullido served as a Navy Hospital Corpsman — the medics who go into the fight to patch up Marines and Soldiers under fire. He’d enlisted hoping to become a doctor one day, and the people who knew him remembered his sense of humor and his readiness to tackle anything head-on. By August 2008, Anthony’s war was supposed to be over. His replacement had already landed in-country. His seat home was waiting. Nobody would have blamed him for staying back and counting down the days. But when his team got tasked into a heavily kinetic area, Anthony made the only choice a brother knows how to make: he volunteered to go anyway, refusing to let his team walk into that danger without him. At the last minute, he and Tiger swapped vehicles — the kind of small decision made in seconds and forgotten by everyone except the one left to carry it. The vehicle Anthony climbed into struck an IED in Sangatesh, Afghanistan. He gave his life in the seat that should have carried Tiger home. Jeff still has Tiger, and thanks God for it every single day. But he lost a little brother that day too, and Tiger still feels the weight of it every year they’re back on the water together. Anthony didn’t have to be there. He chose to be, because that’s what loving your brothers costs sometimes. Honoring a sacrifice like that — freely given, asking nothing back — is part of why this mission exists at all.
— Biographical details: Military Times, Honor the Fallen · Story: MSG (Ret.) Jeffrey L. Haskins