In West Des Moines, Iowa, they all knew something was wrong.
The texts that had been coming regularly suddenly stopped. Sgt. Declan Coady, serving in Kuwait, was out of contact. His family, waiting and worrying back home in West Des Moines, tried to stay positive. But as the hours slipped away without word from their soldier, the anxiety grew.
At 8 p.m. Sunday, the doorbell rang. It was a messenger military families have long dreaded.
“While it’s all blurry, we all knew what the doorbell meant,” Declan’s sister Keira Coady said in a statement released to the press.
The soldier, who joined the United States Army Reserve in 2023 and served as an Army Information Technology Specialist, died on his way to the hospital following an unmanned aircraft system attack, according to Keira Coady and the Department of War. He was among six members of the Des Moines-based 103rd Sustainment Command killed in the attack in Port Shuaiba, Kuwait — the first fallen in Operation Epic Fury. At 20, Coady was the youngest member of the Army support team to be killed in the opening day of the U.S.-Israel joint military operations in Iran.
Another Iowan, Maj. Jeffrey R. O’Brien, 45, of Waukee was killed in the airstrike. The other confirmed casualties are Capt. Cody A. Khork, 35, of Winter Haven, Fla.; Sgt. 1st Class Noah L. Tietjens, 42, of Bellevue, Neb.; Sgt. 1st Class Nicole M. Amor, 39, of White Bear Lake, Minn.
Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert M. Marzan, 54, of Sacramento, Calif., is believed to be the sixth 103rd member killed. Military officials say he was at the scene when the unmanned craft struck.
Coady was posthumously promoted to sergeant.
Keira Coady said she wishes she could have called her little brother and told him how much she loved him, one last time. The regret, the helplessness, is palpable in her statement.
“I wish that I had been able to be there or trade places with him or anything just so he could have known he was safe and that we loved him and he didn’t need to be scared,” she said in the statement.
“He was 20 years old when he left for Kuwait in August, and 20 years old when he died. He was supposed to be 21 on May 5. He was just a baby, and will forever be mine and Aidan’s baby brother, Rowan’s older brother, and our parents’ son.”
‘Larger Waves Coming’
The families of the other five fallen members of the 103rd are going through similar internal struggles right now as they deal with a grief that they knew was possible but prayed would never come.
President Donald Trump has warned that there will likely be more casualties in the days to come. As The Federalist reported, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth on Wednesday signaled prolonged U.S. military involvement in the Islamic Republic of Iran, remarking that operations are “accelerating, not decelerating.”
“As President Trump said, more and larger waves are coming. We are just getting started,” Hegseth said.
He presented a rosy picture of the military operations thus far. The campaign certainly began with a bang, taking out the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and bombing the meeting place of the Assembly of Experts, gathered to deliberate on succession plans to replace the dead head of the regime.
But messaging on the war has been disjointed, conflicting, and confusing, with administration officials citing different priorities and objectives. Is the endgame regime change? Is it knocking out Iran’s nuclear capabilities, the threat that we “totally obliterated” last summer?
Is this furious joint military campaign about having the back of “our greatest ally in the Middle East,” come hell or high water?
Are we doing this to sate the unquenchable blood lust of the neocon warmongers? To further fatten the wallets of the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about so long ago?
‘Sheer Destruction’
No doubt a regime that screams — and means — “Death to America!” possessing nuclear weapons is a dangerous prospect. And this barbaric theocracy, which began by holding U.S. diplomats and civilians hostage for 444 agonizing days, has been a murderous, destabilizing force in the Middle East for nearly a half century.
But war, once you’re in it, comes with its share of the unknown and the unforeseeable, no matter the best laid plans of mice and men. Perhaps the coming days will produce more of the “decisive offensive progress in the conflict” that the Pentagon boasted about just four days into the campaign. Hegseth certainly sounds confident.
“We are only four days into this, and the results have been incredible — historic, really. … Only the United States could lead this [mission]. … But, when you add the Israeli Defense Forces — a devastatingly capable force — the combination is sheer destruction for our radical Islamist Iranian adversaries,” the War secretary said at the Pentagon press conference.
As the buildup of U.S. and Israeli forces continues, let’s just hope that the plan in action is significantly better than the administration’s messaging. If not, the results won’t be so incredible. We could be on the verge of another “forever war” that Trump campaigned on keeping us out of.
‘Make the Right Choices’
Whatever the plan is, it must keep in mind the service members in and moving toward harm’s way. As of late Wednesday, there are six flag-draped caskets heading back from a war with many aims.
How many more families will have to hear the death knell of the doorbell like the Coadys? At the very least, they and their fellow Americans should know what it is we’re fighting for.
Sgt. Declan Coady, the Eagle Scout and cybersecurity major at Des Moines’ Drake University, the young man his mom described as “so kind and so amazing,” has given the last full measure of devotion and his future to the exigencies of war.
As a pre-teen in 2017, Coady offered some advice on his Facebook page that all of us, particularly the war planners, should take to heart: “The world is always changing my friends be prepared for your future and make the right choices.”
