Fair winds and following seas, Sugar Bear

The truth is, I never asked Sugar Bear where he got his call sign.  For all I know, it could have been because he liked gummy bears.  The nickname so perfectly fit the man, with his youthful face and round cheeks, his omnipresent, natural smile and his easygoing, selfless and approachable personality – especially for one of his seniority – that I just took it for granted.  Of course he was Sugar Bear.  That’s what he was.

Shortly after “is” became “was,” I learned that he had been one of the pilots.  We lost two today.  I did not know the other pilot, but I knew Sugar Bear, a little.  I’ll tell you what I knew about him.

When I first reported to the unit with which I would deploy, I didn’t know a soul aside from my Gunny, whom I’d met once.  I had not yet had any training in the job I was to do as a member of the General’s staff.  All I knew was I was the only butter bar in a room full of oak leaves, birds and the occasional star.  I was clueless, and rudderless.

Sugar Bear saved me.  He was the first person to pull me aside and orient me to the massive task before me.  The very first time we met, he spent several hours describing my job to me, explaining the challenges I would face, sketching out a phased approach I could use to overcome them, and most importantly, instilling in me a sense of the gravity of my position as the Wing’s Antiterrorism/Force Protection officer.

Throughout the pre-deployment period, he repeatedly followed up with me, taking time out of a very busy schedule to make sure I was on track and to provide additional guidance.  Behind the scenes he was the strongest advocate for AT/FP on the staff, getting me the resources I would need, since I had neither the rank to get them myself nor even the knowledge to realize I needed them.  Whenever I had a question, which was almost every day, Sugar Bear answered it, not cursorily but fully and patiently.  He gave me the confidence to do the job.

Sugar Bear had been the AT/FP officer on a previous deployment.  This, together with the fact that he was a thorough and consummate professional, explains why he knew the job so well.  But it does not explain why he took me under his wing.  After all, it was not his job to teach me mine – there was a school for that which I attended a little later on.  But if my brief experience with him these past six months was any indication, Sugar Bear was simply a natural leader.  He saw an opportunity to mentor and develop a junior officer and he seized it wholeheartedly.  There was nothing special about me; he would have done the same for any other junior Marine and I have no doubt he did so for many over his career.

Once we deployed, Sugar Bear got even busier, but he was still there for us – my Gunny and me – at every turn.  When AT/FP had no place to work, he offered to make room for us in his office.  We eventually squeezed into a small office of our own in another building, only to get booted out a little while later.  Once again, Sugar Bear offered to re-arrange his entire shop to make room for us if we needed it.  He was the first friend of AT/FP and its longest and best friend, not only because he believed strongly in the mission of protecting Marines, but also because he was perceptive enough to understand the challenges of being an inexperienced Second Lieutenant on a General’s staff and big-hearted enough to give of his own time, energy, resources and expertise to help.

The night before he died, Sugar Bear was still busy helping AT/FP.  I can’t go into specifics on the project, but he was working on something that would improve our awareness of the immediate battle space.  The e-mail he sent me on that project is time-stamped: 1:58 AM.

I did not know Sugar Bear well or long.  I know he leaves behind a wife and two sons but I never had a conversation with him about personal matters.  But I believe I saw enough of the man, the Marine and the leader to understand a little of what we lost today.  The man was almost always smiling, and I will miss that smile.  The Marine was trustworthy, creative and talented.  The leader was quite simply inimitable.  He was Sugar Bear.

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That, I suppose, is my eulogy for Sugar Bear.  I didn’t set out to write one.  I guess I set out to share an experience.  So let me tell you about it.

I found out about the downed bird very shortly after it happened this afternoon.  Within a few hours I’d learned that Sugar Bear was one of the pilots.  I knew he was a pilot by trade, of course, but I had never thought about the fact that he was doing some flying out here, so I was initially shocked.  I found it hard to believe that the man who had been so friendly and helpful and considerate to me these past six months was simply…gone.

My next thought about the whole situation was one that I can’t share here at this time for operational security reasons.  This is quite frustrating as you can imagine.  Moving on.

We almost immediately went into River City, which we’re still in (I’m writing this late at night on the 22nd, local time, but won’t be able to post it till we get out).  A few hours later we had the ramp ceremony.  This is a somber ceremony wherein the caskets are loaded onto the plane to be flown, eventually, back to the States.

The ramp ceremony was the largest one we’ve had since we got here, I’m told by someone who attends them all.  The other pilot we lost was a regular member of the affected flying squadron, so virtually that entire squadron was there along with virtually the entire headquarters (my) squadron, and many others as well.  I would guess there were more than five or six hundred Marines lined up, maybe even a thousand.

A lot of thoughts raced through my head as the caskets were carried by and we executed those slow salutes.  They might not all seem appropriate or rational or I-don’t-know-what, but I’m going to share them anyway.

I thought about Sugar Bear himself, of course.  I thought about his family and the moment they would be notified by a knock on the door from a Marine in Service Alphas.  I suppose it is tautological to say that all men are loved by their loved ones, but as you hopefully gathered from the above, Sugar Bear was the kind of man that it was easy to imagine how much his family must love him.

I thought about whether Sugar Bear got up this morning, knowing he was on the flight schedule, and thought that this might be his last day to live.  Odds are he didn’t; why would he?  The man’s been flying a long time.  I know I didn’t get up this morning thinking that this was Sugar Bear’s last day to live; that by nightfall we’d be deprived of him.

I thought about the fact that I knew he was gone, but his family probably didn’t yet, and how that seemed cosmically unjust.  I thought about the Marines around me and saw in so many of their faces, as clearly as if it were written there, that this was not a new experience for them.  I saw clearly on some faces that it was.

We lined up and we saluted the two caskets.  Then those who wished to do so marched in small groups into the hold of the aircraft to pay our personal respects.  We saluted, and we knelt by the caskets to pray.  I had one hand on the cloth of the flag that tightly draped the casket and I was kneeling for a few seconds before I realized that I wasn’t praying; my mind was blank.  I didn’t know what to pray – did I offer a prayer in Hebrew, the Mourner’s Kadish, for a man who wasn’t Jewish?  I decided to simply ask G-d to look after his family.  Then I asked him to look after the Marine to my left and to my right.  To my left was a Gunny I know, and to my right a Navy LT I know.  I prayed that they would make it home OK.  We rose, saluted again, faced outboard and marched off.  As we marched I realized I hadn’t said a prayer for the other fallen Marine so I asked G-d to look after that man’s family too.  I didn’t know what else to pray for.

When I got back to the office it was late, but everyone, it seemed, had returned as well – no one went straight home from the ramp ceremony.  Conversations I heard, and those I had with some Majors who stopped by, were about everything but Sugar Bear.  There was some small talk and some laughter but I think no one was fooled.  Eventually people started trickling home until I was one of the last there.  So I walked to my can and started writing and that more or less gets us to now, when my eyelids are drooping.

I have no idea what you could possibly have gotten out of this post, but hopefully it was something.  Maybe only the second-hand memory of an exceptional Marine…and that will certainly do.