A baby on 9/11, Marine now a casualty of America's longest war

NEW YORK • Lance Corporal Rylee McCollum, a 20-year-old Marine from Wyoming, got married shortly before his first overseas deployment, and his wife is due to deliver their first child next month, his father said.

Lance Cpl McCollum was excited about becoming a father and seeing his family again. But on Thursday, he was one of 13 United States service members killed in a suicide attack at the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, that left at least 170 people dead.

It was the highest US death toll in a single incident in Afghanistan in 10 years.

He is one of the first American victims to be identified publicly, his death confirmed by his father and by Governor Mark Gordon of Wyoming.

The Marine's unit had been deployed to Afghanistan to provide security and help with evacuations, his father, Mr Jim McCollum, said in a phone interview on Friday. He had been guarding a checkpoint when the explosion tore through the main gate where thousands of civilians have been clamouring to escape the country's new Taleban rulers.

"He was a beautiful soul," his father said from his home in Wyoming.

In the days since his son landed in Afghanistan with his Marine unit, Mr McCollum had been monitoring his phone for a little green dot. He had not been able to talk with his son, but was relieved to be able to see the dot next to his name on a messaging app.

It meant that he was online. That he was still okay.

After the attack, Mr McCollum checked again. He messaged his son: "Hey man, you good?"

But the green dot was gone.

His son never answered.

"In my heart yesterday afternoon, I knew," Mr McCollum said. His fears were confirmed when two Marines knocked on the door of the family's home at 3.30am to deliver the news that Lance Cpl McCollum, who had dreamt of becoming a Marine since he was three years old, had been killed.

The victims' names began to trickle out on Friday, through social media posts from family and friends and sombre announcements from the high schools where they had played football or wrestled just a few years earlier.

Some of them, like Lance Cpl McCollum, who was born in February 2001, were still babies when the US invaded Afghanistan.

Now, they are among the last casualties of America's longest war.

The younger McCollum loved the mountains where he grew up but could not wait to join the Marines, his father said.

Since he was a boy, he could not stand injustice and would stand up for bullied classmates. So on his 18th birthday, he called his father from his school in Jackson Hole to ask him to come sign his enlistment papers.

"He wanted to get in there as quickly as he could," Mr McCollum said. "In his heart of hearts, he wanted to help people."

Mr Regi Stone, a pastor whose son was one of Lance Cpl McCollum's best friends, described him as fiercely devoted.

The two young men always had each other's backs, whether it was at bonfire parties in the Wyoming woods or in their decision to enlist in the Marines at about the same time. "He wouldn't back down from anything," Mr Stone said.

Mr McCollum said it was wrenching to watch the chaos unfolding in Afghanistan after so many years of US military occupation and so many deaths. "It kills me and pains me that we spent 20 years there, and all the lives that were lost there, including my son's. And we're back to square one," he said.

NYTIMES