Was It Worth It?

Brian Faunce was born in Mayfair on Veterans Day, 1974. It didn't take him long to find a soldier's path. As a middle schooler in Bensalem, Bucks County, Faunce signed up for the Civil Air Patrol, the U.S. Air Force's Boy Scoutish civilian auxiliary. As a college student at Penn State, he switched his major from engineering to Spanish because the university's ROTC program was based on the languages campus. Upon graduation, he took an Army assignment that stationed him, in 1999, with multinational forces near Sharm el-Sheik and later served a tour near the Demilitarized Zone in Korea.

He later returned to America and served as a planning officer at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs. Though he often said he was "married to my career," it was at Fort Carson that he met the other love of his life, Cheryl Skeide. They married in April 2001. The night before his second wedding anniversary, he left for Iraq.

During the invasion, his family heard very little from him, "but he was a staff officer, so he was perfectly safe," explains his mother, Judith. "His only weapon was a computer." But in June 2003, the Army restructured, and Brian suddenly received a company command. "This was what he joined the Army for: to lead soldiers," says Judith.

While his unit was in "The Ridge," an area in northern Iraq where daytime temperatures reach 135 F, Brian secured bunkers with air conditioning for the troops. On Sept. 18, 2003, Brian was in a group of Bradlees that passed three young Iraqi males who appeared to be tampering with an abandoned Russian armored vehicle. The boys ran into a nearby forest, and Brian, riding atop his vehicle, pursued. Hidden in the tree line was an exposed electrical wire, which his rifle accidentally snagged. He was immediately med-evac'd to Baghdad, but was dead on arrival. Was It Worth It? "My son believed in what he was doing — he had to," Judith says. "He had to believe he was working for a better world, not just a better Iraq."

Adds his father Richard, "In my mind, our country's heroes are the soldiers, police officers and firemen who every day know what can happen to them, but go to work anyway. My son made the ultimate sacrifice. He was called to do so, and others weren't. That doesn't make their sacrifice any less.

"Freedom and democracy and security of our general public is always worth it. I am very, very proud of my son."