The Gulf-to-present wars · the corpsman, the quartermasters, and a name that is not this city's to count

1990 – 2021

The long wars after 2001 reached this city as they reached every American city — through its reserve units and its volunteers: South Bend's own unit in Iraq was an Army Reserve company: the 855th Quartermaster Company, based in South Bend, whose soldiers served in Iraq — and whose war cost a life the county must boundary-print to count honestly: Specialist Paul Eugene Andersen, whose home was Dowagiac, Michigan, was killed in Baghdad on 1 October 2009 serving with the South Bend company. The city's own dead in these wars stands in the Defense Department's record at its documented size. Navy Hospitalman Benjamin D. Rast, 23, of South Bend — a corpsman who had studied law enforcement at Lake Michigan College and volunteered for Afghanistan — was killed on 6 April 2011 northeast of Patrol Base Alcatraz in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, on a dismounted patrol with the 1st Battalion, 23rd Marines, the Marine Forces Reserve battalion to which he was attached; he is carried on Indiana's OEF–OIF honor roll under his hometown. The record also holds a name this section will not take: Private First Class Jason M. Meyer, a combat engineer killed at Baghdad International Airport on 8 April 2003, was mourned in South Bend, where his father lived — but Meyer had grown up and enlisted from Howell, Michigan, and the Congressional Record's tribute prints the fact plainly. He stands here as a South Bend family's loss, counted in Michigan's roll, because that is what the record says — the same discipline this section applies to every name it does count.

Sources:

1. Indiana OEF–OIF Honor Roll (Indiana Department of Veterans Affairs memorial), as reported 23 May 2011 — Hospitalman Benjamin D. Rast, 23, South Bend, killed 6 April 2011, Helmand Province, with 1st Battalion, 23rd Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division, Marine Forces Reserve; his Lake Michigan College studies and volunteering as reported.
2. Defense Department casualty record as compiled in the Allen County Genealogical Society's 21st Century Veterans' Honor Roll — Rast (South Bend; KIA 6 April 2011) and Spc. Paul Eugene Andersen (home Dowagiac, Michigan; 855th Quartermaster Company, South Bend, Indiana; killed 1 October 2009, Baghdad).
3. Congressional Record, vol. 149, Senate, 6 May 2003 — Sen. Lugar's tribute: Pfc. Jason M. Meyer, killed 8 April 2003 at Baghdad International Airport; his father living in South Bend; Meyer a 1999 graduate of a Howell, Michigan high school who had lived there with his mother.