This week I wanted to write about something I’ve been struggling with for a few days, and will continue to struggle with for another week or so every year around this time. On February 2nd, 2017, my friend Sergeant Christopher Ryan Hoch was murdered while trying to protect people he loved and cared about. He had just come home from a 9-month deployment in Iraq. I remember hearing about it, and at first, I felt nothing, which worried me. Then all at once pain, sadness, hurt and stronger than any other emotion, a deep powerful rage, which I’ve only felt a few times in my life. I never fully processed what happened to him and its only recently have I been starting to let myself feel the emotions I should have an need to feel last year. To this day, I still don’t understand why that happened to him. He was the best of us, liked and admired by everyone. My brain and heart have had two different ideas on how to deal with this now that I can’t numb myself anymore. Part of me want to honor Chris and the kind of man and warrior he was by living my life in a way that honors his memory and would make him proud if he could see me. The other part of me wants the bastard who killed him, dead no matter the consequences. But all that would accomplish would ruin more lives. That guy will get what he deserves while he rots in prison, and the only thing I can do now is do my best to keep Hoch’s memory alive and honor his courage, compassion, and sacrifice by being the kind of man that he’d be proud to call his friend.
Until Valhalla brother,
Sgt Christopher Ryan Hoch
18 Nov 1988 – 02 Feb 2017
B CO 1-502 101st ABN DIV.
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