Remembering the colleagues we lost: A veteran's Memorial Day reflection

This Memorial Day, as our nation pauses to honor those who gave their last full measure of devotion, I find myself thinking not of abstract statistics or distant battlefields, but of the faces, the names and the laughter of the colleagues I lost along the way.

I enlisted in the Air Force as an explosive ordnance disposal technician in 1979. For more than three decades, I served in uniform, from the flight line to the cockpit of the B-1 bomber, from squadron command to wing command, through...