A brother lost in war

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Jonathan Curtis was killed last week in Afghanistan by a suicide bomber (Photo: Brian Curtis)

Soldier Jonathan Curtis was only 24 years old when he was killed by a suicide bomber last week in Afghanistan.

Army specialist, Curtis was guarding the entrance of a US base in Kandahar, Afghanistan, on Nov. 1, when he stopped an unidentified visitor from coming too close. Curtis, who grew up in Belmont, and Private First Class Andrew Meari of Illinois were killed when the visitor set off a suicide bomb.

Honored posthumously with a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart, Curtis, who was 24, died doing a job he specifically chose, because he performed well enough on the Army’s entrance exams to take his pick of assignments.

His brother Brian Curtis talks with anchor Lisa Mullins. Download MP3 (Photo: Brian Curtis)

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Brian Curtis: My name is Brian Curtis I live in Belmont, MA and on November 1st, 2010 my brother Jonathan Curtis who was a specialist in the army was killed outside Kandahar, Afghanistan by a suicide bomber.

Lisa Mullins: Last week Brian Curtis watched a military plane bring home the remains of his younger brother. Row upon row of soldiers lined the tarmac and the road beyond. They stopped to salute Jonathan Curtis, Brian was surprised by the range of emotions he felt.

Curtis: So your brother’s body is coming home, ah, from the war, ah. I expected it to be really sad occasion and it certainly was in its own way, um, but personally I mostly just felt proud because the, uh, you know I couldn’t help thinking that all these soldiers saluting, all these people saluting my brother was not somebody to uh want to attract a lot of attention or be the center of attention but I think he would have appreciated that. Not very many people get saluted like that in life or death and so you know he was my little brother and I felt like he really must have done something to deserve that.

Mullins: I wonder, especially now around Thanksgiving, there are some people who have come home, and some people who aren’t coming home. What are your thoughts about that as your family gets together? Have you steeled yourself for that? Or like, whats, how do you prepare yourself for it.

Curtis: Well, uh, I hate to say it but Military life has had its share of, not military life for me obviously but John being in the military, has had its share of missing holiday’s anyways. So, the different part is that you just have to remember that there is a family member that won’t ever be back for Thanksgiving. I think that’s the, that’s hard, I think if you have someone over there the difficulty is that it doesn’t matter if it’s Thanksgiving or just a random Tuesday morning and you think about them, um, now at least we don’t have that fear anymore. But obviously the worst kind of happened so, I don’t know, and we’ll make sense of that in the coming time I guess.

Mullins: I think every family member worries when someone is deployed, especially overseas in a war zone in John’s case. But um, but, the vast majority of soldiers and marines do come home safely. Do you feel like you just had a gut feeling about this or you were just your typical family member who was worried?

Curtis: I gotta tell you actually, I talked to him on Sunday before he died on Monday November 1st, I talked to him on Halloween which was actually my sons birthday which is why he called and he was telling me that he might come home a little bit early. Something like May 2nd at the latest now. And uh, I thought to myself, obviously I didn’t say that to him, but I thought to myself boy that sounds like a long time for someone who’s in the line of fire everyday. And I guess something to be thankful for is uh that there’s people and that there continue to be people that are willing to put themselves in danger and not only soldiers but people willing to put themselves in danger to do good work for the rest of us, um.

Mullins: Do you feel thankful?

Curtis: Yeah

Mullins: I mean you just, you just buried your brother, you just had a really moving service for him

Curtis: Absolutely, um, you know we have a lot to be thankful for. I think if we didn’t have a lot to be thankful for, um, it would make the thought that we were putting, you know, we’re sending our loved ones overseas into danger, um, make that not make a lot of sense. And I’m thankful for something else that we talked, one of the things about war that we’ve been able to talk to our kids about, which is how thankful we are that that it’s not going on in our own backyards, not on our streets. And you know there has to be a lot of empathy I think, a lot of compassion for the people over there um, even when some of them are the antagonists. The fact that there’s a war going on right in their back yard is something you that you can’t lose sight of. I don’t think that they grieve their dead any less than we do.

Mullins: That’s Brian Curtis of Belmont, MA. His brother Army Specialist Jonathan Curtis was killed on November 1st by a suicide bomber near Kandahar, Afghanistan

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