Michael G. Cahill spoke to soldiers all the time in his job as physician’s assistant. In the times when he met soldiers who were too unstable to walk to psychiatric services, Cahill would walk them there himself. Cahill, 62, a retired National Guardsman, was one of 13 people killed at Fort Hood on Thursday afternoon by a gunman authorities identified as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.
The Army on Saturday afternoon released the names of all 13 victims. All the victims who were inside a medical and services center at Fort Hood were to be deployed to Afghanistan.
Capt. Russell Seager, a nurse practitioner who helped veterans struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder was among those killed. “He just wanted to help the soldiers because they helped us,” his uncle Larry Seager said. “And then he got shot by a psychiatrist.”
Pfc. Michael Pearson, 21 joined the Army a year ago, was training to deactivate bombs and was known for his nimble fingers on his guitar. Specialist Jason D. Hunt, 22, joined the military three years ago because, he told his grandmother, “it was time to grow up.” And when his two-year commitment was finished, he re-enlisted for six more years, right in the middle of the Iraq desert on his 21st birthday. Specialist Hunt was on his way back to join his division in Iraq, when he was shot. Willingham, could not help recalling a conversation she and her younger brother recently had. “We were discussing the love of a parent, and he said, ‘I would die for your children. I would die for a stranger. And I would jump in front of a bullet for another soldier,” she recalled.
... contd.