Most of the Americans killed in the Kabul bombing were 9/11 babies who never knew a nation at peace. The 13 American service members killed in Kabul on Thursday died in gruesome violence, victims of a terrorist bombing. They were, with one exception, 9/11 babies, born within a few years of the terrorist attacks that led the United States into a military conflict that stretched across four presidencies and throughout the lives of these 11 men and two women.
Five of the 13 were 20 years old, as old as the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. One 20-year-old, Marine Lance Cpl. David L. Espinoza, had called his mother from Kabul on Wednesday. "I love you," he told Elizabeth Holguin before they hung up. Becoming a Marine had always been Espinoza's dream, his mother told The Post, and he enlisted right after finishing high school in Rio Bravo, Tex., a small, mostly Hispanic town near Laredo.
"It was his calling, and he died a hero," Holguin said. She said her heart has "a David-sized hole nobody can fill."
Another of the 20-year-olds, Marine Lance Cpl. Rylee J. McCollum, was a baby on 9/11 and had wanted to join the armed forces since he was 2 years old, according to his sister, Roice. Another sister recalled Rylee as a toddler, carrying around a toy rifle and wearing his sister's pink princess snow boots. "He signed up the day he turned 18," she said. "That was his plan his whole life." Rylee, who grew up in Jackson, Wyo., and was a decorated wrestler in high school, had just gotten married on Valentine's Day before departing on his first overseas assignment in April. He'd been transferred to Afghanistan two weeks ago. His wife, Jiennah Crayton, who lives in San Diego, was counting the days until McCollum's return from his tour of duty. She is pregnant, and the couple had hoped Rylee might be home just in time for the arrival of their baby in three weeks, the sister said.
The oldest service member killed in Thursday's attack, Marine Staff Sgt. Darin Taylor Hoover, who went by Taylor, was 31. He had decided on a military career after seeing New York's twin towers collapse in the 2001 attack, when he was 11. He enlisted when he was 19.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/kabul-bombing-victims-americans-marines/2021/08/28/2a85c00e-0778-11ec-8c3f-3526f81b233b_story.html