Ten years after a sniper’s bullet killed his son in Iraq, Allen Hoe says the loss doesn’t get easier.
"To be honest with you, it gets harder. It truly gets harder because now the pain is somewhat muted, but the emotional kind of stress is even greater," Hoe said Thursday.
On Jan. 22, 2005, popular platoon leader 1st Lt. Nainoa K. Hoe, a Kamehameha Schools graduate and UH ROTC standout, was killed when he exited a Stryker armored vehicle on a mission to a medical clinic in Mosul.
The thought of not being able to help raise whatever grandchildren might have come gets harder as he gets older, Allen Hoe said.
In the decade after his son’s death at the age of 27, and more than three years after that Iraq War chapter ended for the United States, the Maunawili man has tried to keep his son’s memory alive through the Army, which places value on lineage and legacy.
On Thursday dozens of soldiers gathered at a training center at Schofield Barracks named for the fallen Hawaii soldier to celebrate some of the same leadership qualities found in others.
The Nainoa Hoe Memorial Platoon Leadership Competition, a multiday event, wrapped up with an awards ceremony and comments by Allen Hoe and officials.
The competition, involving 16 five-member teams, tested physical and mental stamina and cohesion through marching, shooting and group tasks in forests and on beaches around Oahu.
A team from the 1st Battalion, 21st Infantry, "Gimlets" came out on top.
Nainoa Hoe was with the 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry, out of Fort Lewis, Wash. Each year, on the anniversary of his son’s death, Allen Hoe, who was a combat medic in Vietnam, has gone to Schofield to speak, officials said.
Lt. Col. James Tuite, the 1-21 commander at Schofield, said Allen Hoe raised his son to be a leader who bonded with his soldiers, and the thought was to try and "replicate that experience for the guys that are here now" with the leadership competition.
Nainoa Hoe made an impression both in Hawaii and Iraq.
The 1995 Kamehameha Schools graduate was an Army Pacific Reserve soldier of the year with the 100th Battalion, 442nd Infantry Regiment, before he went on active duty. In his last year at UH, Hoe was ROTC battalion commander.
Dan Pfeiffer, who served under Hoe in Iraq and was on the mission when he was killed, came out from Minneapolis to attend the 10-year commemoration of his platoon leader’s death.
"He was a great leader," said Pfeiffer, now 34 and out of the Army. "No matter how frustrated the platoon was with missions or just feeling like we were always drawing the short straw of missions, he could inspire everyone to move past that."
Hoe also had a lighter side. When the platoon was tapped as a quick reaction force and the radio crackled warnings to be ready to go, known as Red Con 1, for Ready Condition 1 — and then those missions were often canceled — Hoe took to calling the readiness Red Con Fun, Pfeiffer recalled.
Pfeiffer was in the fourth Stryker vehicle and Hoe was in the first when the platoon leader got out and the sniper’s shot rang out.
"There was a single shot from a sniper, and then a machine-gun position opened up," Pfeiffer said.
The soldiers put Hoe on a stretcher and drove him to a combat surgical hospital.
"Pretty much the entire platoon who had spent the past few hours in the rain, soaking wet, stood in a muddy, wet parking lot waiting to hear the news," he said. After a higher-ranking officer told them of his death, Hoe’s soldiers passed through to pay their respects. "The entire platoon went in," Pfeiffer recalled.
Tuite, the battalion commander, said it’s important to bridge the service and sacrifice of soldiers past and present.
"The importance for me," Tuite said, "is that we stand here, all of us together today, on the accomplishments, the experience and the knowledge and the wisdom that’s passed from all the people that have gone before us."
