FORT BRAGG -- The Army unveiled a larger memorial wall Thursday to its special operations soldiers who have died in the line of duty, opening more space for names of those killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
When the Army originally dedicated a special operations memorial in 1995, most of the 804 names it bore were of soldiers killed in Vietnam. Now, with the addition of 35 new names of those killed in the past year, the new wall honors 1,113 soldiers, including 255 killed since the start of the war in Afghanistan.
The soldiers who died had been extraordinary and had volunteered repeatedly to get into their elite units, said Lt. Gen. John F. Mulholland, leader of U.S. Army Special Operations Command, based at Fort Bragg.
"When you are in this kind of war for nine years, you don't stay in this kind of formation unless you have a passion for it," Mulholland said.
"And these were passionate men. These were men who loved what they did and knew they were making a difference in the most dangerous missions around the world on behalf of all of us, on behalf of this great country."
Mulholland was speaking to an audience that included more than 400 members of the families of the dead soldiers: mothers and young wives in sunglasses that helped them hide their tears, fathers trying to hold up, grandparents on creaky knees, babies who would never know their fathers.
The low-key ceremony was punctuated by the soft staccato of a muffled drum. Commanders of the various Army Special Operations units - which include aviation, civil affairs and psychological operations as well as the better-known Special Forces - placed wreaths in front of the wall.
As an officer read the names of the recently fallen soldiers, a bell chimed with each name.
'Laughter of our family'
The ninth chime was for Staff Sgt. Joshua Mills, a 24-year-old Green Beret from Texas, who had been stationed at Fort Bragg.
"He was the fun and the laughter of our family, the jokester and the entertainer," said his mother, Celeste Mills, who was among six family members to fly up from his native Texas. They joined Mills' wife, Magen, 22, and his son, Malaki, 18 months, who wore a tiny T-shirt in the Army's distinctive pattern of camouflage.
When Joshua was a child himself, he tried to wring an adventure out of every minute, his mother said.
"If there was anything that could be climbed or jumped off, he was always the first one," she said.
His idea of the proper way into their pool, she said, was a leap from the roof.
By age 13, he was interested in following his father Tommy, who had served in Vietnam, into the military, and focused so hard on it that when he was grilled by ROTC officers at the University of Texas at El Paso before he started there, he startled them with the depth of his knowledge about the military, said his mother.
After 18 months in the university, he decided he wanted to be a Special Forces soldier and dropped out to enlist.
Until recent years, Green Berets were recruited only from among experienced soldiers.
But because of the demand for the elite unit, the Army started a program to give fresh recruits a chance to try out immediately, though making the cut still means surviving a rigorous program of screening and training. Mills was among a group of eight soldiers out of 400 who made it, said his father.
Mills was deployed to Afghanistan in 2008, granted leave to come home to see his son born and eventually deployed to southern Afghanistan again last summer.
He died Sept. 15, along with two other soldiers and an Afghan interpreter, when their vehicle tripped a wire that detonated an improvised bomb, Tommy Mills said.
They had nearly made it back to base from a successful mission.
He pointed at the black wall, with its space for more names, and said it was crucial to remember all the soldiers and what their work means.
"Units like this are moving things forward by building trust with the Afghans," he said.
"Maybe they'll be able to help make a new government there one day."
Celeste Mills said the monument was a comfort, even though it will be hundreds of miles from her home in ElPaso.
"It's here where other people will see it, so their sacrifices are honored and won't be forgotten," she said. "That means a lot to the families, that we'll not be the only ones who remember them."
