Published: January 08, 2008 12:34 am         

Army officer wrote his own epitaph in final blog post

NORTH ANDOVER, Mass. — Army Maj. Andrew Olmsted’s final message was a blog entry he left for a friend in case he died in Iraq.

“I must say here what I would much prefer to say in person,” said the entry, which ran Jan. 4, a day after he was killed by a sniper near Sadiyah.

Olmsted was the husband of Amanda Wilson, who grew up in North Andover and graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover. Olmsted was originally from Maine and graduated from St. John’s High School in Shrewsbury. The two met at Clark University.

Wilson’s grandmother Ruth Wilson of North Andover said Olmsted was gone a lot because of the military, so when the two were together they were “like newlyweds.” They were married 10 years ago and had their home in Colorado Springs, Colo.

“They were a perfect couple,” Ruth Wilson said. “They knew they were on limited time before he would go away again.”

Ruth Wilson said Olmsted, 38, had planned to retire from the military in the next few years to become a journalist.

He was known to many through a blog he had kept for the Rocky Mountain News since May 21 with news about his time in Iraq. His last entry was posted on the Rocky Mountain News Web site on Dec. 26, but he also asked a friend to enter his “Final Post” in case he died. That entry can be found on andrewolmsted.com and a Web site known as “Obsidian Wings.”

In that entry, he left his thoughts on death, the war and love.

He described his wife as a “woman who made my life something to enjoy rather than something merely to survive. She put up with all of my faults, and they are myriad; she endured separations again and again. ... I cannot imagine being more fortunate in love than I have been with Amanda.”

He also asked that no one use his death to prove their own political viewpoints. He himself expresses that he believed in his job while recognizing the pain that war brings.

“... while you’re free to think whatever you like about my life and death, if you think I wasted my life, I’ll tell you you’re wrong,” he wrote. “We’re all going to die of something. I died doing a job I loved. When your time comes, I hope you are as fortunate as I was.”

Olmsted and Capt. Thomas Casey of Albuquerque were killed in the attack on Jan. 3.

”They were pursuing some insurgents,” Casey’s brother, Jeffrey, told The Rocky Mountain News. “Major Olmsted got out of his vehicle and was pleading with these three individuals to stop and surrender so that the team would not have to fire upon them and kill them.

“Unfortunately, there were snipers in the area, and apparently that’s when Major Olmsted was hit,” Jeffrey Casey added. “He didn’t want to kill these individuals. He was trying to save their lives.”

The two soldiers were part of a team that was training Iraqi police and military forces.

In his final blog post, Olmsted wrote about the pain of loss.

“That is part of the cost of war, any war, no matter how justified,” he wrote. “If everyone who feels this pain keeps that in mind the next time we have to decide whether or not war is a good idea, perhaps it will help us to make a more informed decision.”

Both the final newspaper blog and personal blog have become a virtual gathering place for family, friends and even strangers to leave messages for Olmsted and his family. Hundreds of entries, including messages from all over the world, have been posted.



Drake Lucas writes for The Eagle-Tribune in North Andover, Mass. Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.





From his final blog:

“I wasn’t the greatest husband. I could have done so much more, a realization that, as it so often does, comes too late to matter. But I cherished every day I was married to Amanda. When everything else in my life seemed dark, she was always there to light the darkness. It is difficult to imagine my life being worth living without her having been in it.”

“I’m afraid I can’t really offer any deep secrets or wisdom. I lived my life better than some, worse than others, and I like to think that the world was a little better off for my having been here. Not very much, but then, few of us are destined to make more than a tiny dent in history’s Green Monster.”

“I do ask (not that I’m in a position to enforce this) that no one try to use my death to further their political purposes. I went to Iraq and did what I did for my reasons, not yours. My life isn’t a chit to be used to bludgeon people to silence on either side.”