One of the biggest surprises – and announcements – from Mayor Tom Henry’s State of the City address had little to do with city government at all.With the number of U.S. troops touching down in Afghanistan continually escalating throughout the summer, Chad Clements was as nervous about war as anyone else would be, his family said.
Still, he was prepared to do what he was signed up to do.
“He was ready to go,” said Tim Clements, a cousin who knew Chad his entire life and spoke to the 26-year-old Huntington resident days before he deployed Aug. 5. “It was something new and different.”
Details of Pfc. Chad Clements’ death and the deaths of four soldiers who were with him were officially released by the Department of Defense on Wednesday.
An improvised bomb tore apart a Humvee traveling through the Arghandab River Valley on Monday. It killed Clements along with Capt. Dale A. Goetz, 43, of White, S.D.; Staff Sgt. Jesse Infante, 30, of Cypress, Texas; Staff Sgt. Kevin J. Kessler, 32, of Canton, Ohio; and Staff Sgt. Matthew J. West, 36 of Conover, Wis.
The Arghandab River Valley is a Taliban stronghold that contains numerous land mines. President Obama has sent a surge of 30,000 troops into the country to help with the war, which had meaning not lost on Clements, his family said.
“He was very apprehensive about what lay ahead,” said Michael Clements, another cousin of Chad Clements. “It was something new, and obviously there were reports we were stepping up our interactions in Afghanistan. You don’t step up forces if everything is going smoothly.”
The soldiers killed in the bomb attack Monday were from Fort Carson, an Army outpost in Colorado Springs, Colo., that has suffered heavy losses in Afghanistan.
Eight soldiers from Fort Carson were killed in October in an attack on a remote outpost in the northern part of the country.
Clements joined the Army in February 2009, just a month before he turned 25, according to his sister Danielle Clements.
Before he enlisted, Clements worked construction jobs, his cousins said. One day, he called Tim Clements to tell him he had signed on the dotted line, that he was actually a member of the Army. He wanted to make a difference, both Tim and Mike Clements said.
“I said, ‘Congratulations,’ ” Tim recalled. “(Some might have asked him) ‘Why? Why right now with everything going on in the world?’ But he felt pretty passionate about what he decided to do.”
As of late Tuesday, the U.S. death toll for Afghanistan in August stood at 56 – three-quarters of them in the second half of the month as the Taliban fought back against U.S. pressure in southern and eastern strongholds.
American losses accounted for more than 70 percent of the 76 fatalities suffered by the entire NATO-led force.
Until the late-month spike, it appeared the August death toll would be well below the monthly records of 66 in July and 60 in June.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
