Fallen Marine from Mardela becomes symbol of bravery, sacrifice

Time doesn't heal all wounds. Not this one at least.

"Oh, I miss him so bad," said Jeanne Cohee the other day at the small kitchen table inside her home in Mardela Springs. "If you knew him, you'd never forget him."

Walter Cohee III, her younger son, was killed in a helicopter crash in the mountains of northern Afghanistan. He was a Marine staff sergeant, son, brother and fiancé.

He was 26 years old.

That day — Jan. 19, 2002 — Cohee became a grim statistic: the first casualty from Maryland in the war in Afghanistan. Into its 16th year, the battle grinds on.

So, too, does a mother's grief. 

Memorial Day, celebrated Monday, is the federal holiday set aside for remembering those who lost their lives defending the country. For Jeanne Cohee, though, every day is Memorial Day.

Not a day goes by that she doesn't think of the fun-loving, motorcycle-riding young man everyone called "Trae," being third in a line of Walters. In fact, he's been on her mind more lately. And she doesn't know exactly why.

Fifteen years later, she still channels her pain the only way she knows how: by telling crowds big and small the story of her son — and his sacrifice.

Cohee has spoken at schools, 9/11 remembrances, political events. It helps her heal a wound she knows will never disappear.

“At the time, I thought I never would be able to do this," she said. "I’ve never been vocal in front of people. I’ve never spoken in front of 10 people, let alone 300. But when you get up there and talk about somebody you love, it just starts flowing and you can’t stop it.

"And," Cohee quickly added, "you don’t want to stop it.”

Grief back home

Her husband's method stands in contrast with hers.

The elder Walter Cohee has only in the last few years begun to speak openly and at length about the loss of his son. Those discussions are limited, though, to a select few family members and friends.

“He’s not over it yet," Jeanne Cohee said. "Not that he ever will be. He gets emotional and all. He’ll cry over it in a heartbeat.”

Cohee, white-haired and inching past 70, tries to avoid his son's old bedroom. Like his son's memory, it's almost impossible to avoid. The door is at the top of the stairs, and his own room lies at the other end of the hallway.

“I can't get up in it," he said. "It just bothers me.”

His son leads him there anyway.

Discussing Trae's far-flung travels, Cohee's mind hit a snag. He could remember that his son had visited the French Riviera, Okinawa and Russia. But there were more, and the map pinned up in Trae's bedroom would prime his memory.

So up the beige-carpeted stairs he clambered.

To this day, the cramped bedroom remains largely untouched from the day Trae joined the Marines in 1993. It's hard to imagine a twin-size bed fitting in the space, let alone a young man of Trae's sprawling ambitions. 

There's the old green and yellow baseball helmet from Mardela Middle and High on an upper shelf. There are his old shirts still hanging in the closet. Here, time is marked not by hours or years but by the accretion of boxes and stuff that wouldn't fit elsewhere in the house.

Cohee hunched over, squinting at the map. It turned out he had forgotten one of the 1990s' most-significant conflicts: the Bosnian War. Of course, Trae had been there as well.

A Marine's life

In his parents' telling, Trae is a symbol of bravery and service. But he's no saint either. They recall his drunken yelling matches with his father in the back driveway and his penchant for guzzling their liquor and refilling the bottles with water.

"Him and I didn't get along," Walter Cohee said. 

The Cohees are a working family.

Walter served in the Air Force for two years during the Vietnam War era but never got dispatched any closer to the action than MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. He worked for Delmarva Power for years as a laborer and machinist — or a "grease monkey," as he put it — at its Vienna power plant.

MORE MEMORIAL:Salisbury soldier remembered on 10-year anniversary of death.

Jeanne operated a hair salon out of one of their spare rooms. Between her business and the couple's having two sons — Kris was born about 15 months before Trae — the house was a hive of activity.

Trae was always inviting friends over, too. And Jeanne would make sure there was spaghetti dinner waiting for them. The family owned four pull-out couches and often needed them all.

The Marines "turned him 180 degrees around," Walter recalled.

He joined while he was still in high school but didn't leave for training until after graduation. He was a different person when he returned, his parents say, He would say, "Yes, ma'am," and "No, sir." He was careful to address officers by their rank and made sure others around him did so as well.

After four years in the Marines' transportation wing, he told his father he was getting tired of the routine. He wanted to fly. So he studied aviation electronics and became a staff sergeant.

Trae always harbored a fear of flying. But he loved being in the air, his mother said.

“It doesn’t make sense, does it?" Jeanne said with a shrug that seemed to say "that's just my son."

Stallion down

After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Trae was determined to fight in Afghanistan, his parents said. He made his mind up that day he was ready to go after Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the attacks. 

On that cold January day the following year, Trae was one of seven Marines aboard a CH-53E Super Stallion on a resupply mission.

One of the three engines lost power and a second soon followed. The helicopter plummeted over mountainous terrain. The pilot, then-Capt. Douglas Glasgow, managed to keep the craft out of a nosedive and veer it away from the face of a mountain.

His quick actions likely saved lives that day, according to a Marine Corps crash report made public several months later. Five of the seven would survive the crash. Two died instantly: Staff Sgt. Dwight J. Morgan of California and Cohee.

“The worst thing that happened to us," Walter Cohee said, blinking back tears.

"Home here with us"

More than 1,000 people paid their respects to Maryland's first fallen soldier at his funeral, held at the fire hall down the street from where he grew up. The U.S. Census Bureau lists a population of 364 for the town of Mardela Springs as of 2000.

The family was offered a burial at Arlington National Cemetery. They demurred, laying their son to rest in East New Market where other family members are buried.

“It’s an honor to be up there, but I want him home here with us," Walter said. Trae would only be about 15 miles away if he "wanted to argue with him or say something to him."

After the phone calls slowed and the news reporters faded away, the family eventually settled into a new routine.

They kept in touch for a time with the woman who had been poised to become their daughter-in-law. But time moved on, and so did both parties.

Jeanne gave up her salon, tiring of answering the same questions over and over again about her son. Walter got a tattoo on his upper left arm in memory of Trae, depicting two of the things his son most loved: a Harley Davidson motor and the American flag.

A few years later, the Salisbury chapter of the Marine Corps League named its detachment in honor of Trae. The offers for Jeanne to give speeches have grown fewer. But she is still happy to talk, even if the act never makes her truly happy.

These days, Walter and Jeanne are as busy as ever. They watch Kris' daughter after school and a good deal of other times, too. She is a typical 6-year-old: all energy, moods and buoyant brilliance.

Walter dotes on his grandchild, showing an affection, Jeanne said, she thought had gone out of him forever.

The girl's parents named her Marina, after the branch of the armed forces forever intertwined with the family's sacrifice.

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