'REAL COURAGE'
Fought back from wounds to return to war BOSTON NATIVE SGT. 1ST CLASS ERIC EMOND KILLED IN AFGHANISTAN
U.S. Army Special Forces Sgt. 1st. Class Eric Emond was a pivotal part of the team of combat vets who created the Seaport memorial to the state’s Iraq and Afghanistan war dead.
His name will be the next one added to it.
Emond, 39, was killed Tuesday in Andar, Ghazni Province, Afghanistan when a roadside bomb hit the vehicle he was riding in. Army Capt. Andrew Patrick Ross and Air Force Staff Sgt. Dylan Elchin died with him.
“When I tell my kids stories about bravery and courage, it’s going to be guys like Eric Emond I’m talking about,” said Boston police Sgt. Michael Brown, a Marine veteran of Iraq who worked with Emond on the memorial project.
Emond was on his seventh combat tour. He had been a Marine scout sniper in the first Marine incursion in Afghanistan 17 years ago, and later joined the U.S. Army and became a Green Beret.
In 2009, Emond was severely wounded by an RPG in an ambush in Afghanistan’s Paktika Province. Back home in Boston, while fighting to recover sufficiently to pass a medical board and go back to active service, he was part of the small group of combat vets in 2010 who ini- tiated the nation’s first Iraq and Afghan war memorial — the obelisk and plaque that now stands on a dedicated plaza in Boston’s Seaport.
“You’re injured, you fight to get back, you keep going forward,” Brown said. “That’s real courage. They keep going back and back for a country that seemingly has found other things to put on the front page.”
Massachusetts Fallen Heroes director Dan Magoon, an Iraq combat vet, said, “He obviously put others above himself. His whole life was dedicated to serving his country. “
The war memorial project was entirely organized by veterans who raised more than $2 million in private funds and state grants. The Massachusetts Fallen Heroes Foundation is now dedicated to providing support to Gold Star Families and educating schoolchildren about their sacrifices.
“He was instrumental to getting this off the ground,” Magoon said. “The mission has come full circle. All we can do now is honor his legacy and support his family.”
Brown recalled the support Emond and other the combat vets gave each other.
“We really leaned on each other,” Brown said. “It was big for us. We were part of a small group of guys who used the memorial to readjust. It was our goal, our work, our passion. But it got us together, with shared experience.”
Emond, a graduate of Durfee High School in Fall River, leaves his wife Allie and three young children in Fort Bragg, N.C., where he was stationed as a member of the 3rd Special Forces Group.
Massachusetts Fallen Heroes co-founder Greg Kelly, a Boston firefighter and fellow Green Beret who served in the same task force as Emond in Afghanistan in 2009, said, “He’s a great American. He served his country his entire adult life. He served his community. He was doing something he loved. He died doing something he loved.”