My heart is absolutely broken

As you all undoubtedly know, I have been involved with Soldiers' Angels for a few years now. I have "adopted" a number of soldiers, sailors and marines in that time, and have grown quite close to a number of them; many of them are included in this email. They all become a part of my family, and have a part of my heart, even after they return home. They become my sisters, my brothers and my friends.

I just found out about 20 minutes ago that, for the first time, I have lost one of my heroes. (It took me about 10 minutes to type that sentence, since I started crying about halfway through.) The level of heartache is so strong that I can only imagine how his family and friends are feeling. His name is, was, Matthew Grimm. He's 21 and from Wisconsin Rapids. He was one of my "unofficial" adoptees, which means he wasn't assigned to me but he got one of my letters and I kind of took him "under my wing," as we Angels say. He sent me an email called "From your soldier" when he got my first letter, and from that moment on, that's exactly what he was--my soldier.

Since then, we've emailed almost every day. I know that he's been going out on some pretty dangerous missions and he always emailed me right when he got back. I hadn't heard from him in a few days and I just sent him a message last night, giving him a hard time, saying, "Hey, did you go out on a mission and forget to tell your Angel?" A few minutes ago, on a hunch, more of an instinct recently, I checked the Department of Defense casualty list and prompty threw up when I saw his name and picture.

The last email I got from him was, it turns out, the morning of the day he died. He was telling me about the mission he just returned from. But you know, he was also glad to be going on these missions. He was proud of it, especially compared to some of the other stuff he was doing there. The funniest email I got from him was just a few days before he died, when he was complaining about one of the sh** jobs his superior had given him. He wrote, "You wouldn't believe what our platoon had to do today for our time off. We had to sweep the mud off of the cement. Not that this cement is important anyways it's just something for us to do. Another thing is how do you sweep mud off when all you end up doing is spreading it around. I swear half of these leaders here have lost it." So of course, I spent the next couple emails teasing him about My Hero the Mud Sweeper.

I"m sending this to everyone on my email list because I want each and every one of you to have at least heard his name. I want you to know who he is, who he was. How much he believed in what he was doing and why they were over there. How he was scared when he went out on missions. And of course he was....HE WAS A DAMN KID.

I'm blubbering again.

A kid who was one of the bravest men I'll ever know.