My Men are My Heroes (5 page)

From that battle forth First Sergeant Kasal's life would never again be the same.

Brad Kasal was born to Gerald and Myrna Kasal in Marengo, Iowa, on a cold February day in 1966. There were three boys already in the clan when Brad arrived, and after a long drought, a fifth son would be born. Not too long after Brad's birth, the family moved from that small farming community west of Cedar Rapids to Afton in southwest Iowa.

Afton is a timeworn village of about 900 in northern Union County, a farming region where good brown soil competes with clay, rocks, scrub, and winding gulches. You can walk across town in 10 minutes. The Kasal farm rests on a hill overlooking a landscape of more rugged hills subdivided by fences full of hedge apples, junipers, old oaks, and an occasional walnut tree. Go a few miles in any direction and the terrain modulates to the gently rolling prairie and rich ground Iowa is best known for.

In the spring and summer the land around Afton renews itself. Redbuds and dogwoods and early spring flowers bloom. When the crops burst forth, the land turns dark green. When it gets warm, residents plant their sparse yards with bright annuals that
compete with the occasional clump of perennials waving in the wind. Many Aftonians keep dogs and cats, cars and boats, and all manner of contraptions in their driveways and yards, adding both clutter and life to the place. The town's northwestern boundary is marked by an imposing row of raw concrete grain elevators; toward the center of town a diamond-shape water tower punctuates the otherwise uninterrupted horizon.

From the stand of ragged oaks on Highway 34 near the optimistically named Grand River, Afton doesn't look like a place where legends are born. Except for the occasional train that pounds along the old Burlington-Northern tracks, the town looks relaxed, an easy spot to spend a quiet life. On hot sunny days the turkey buzzards circle overhead waiting for something to die, and red-tailed hawks and an occasional eagle glide lazily by looking for something to kill. Not much else moves.

Many Iowa families came to the state from somewhere else. So it was with the Kasal family. Brad's father, Gerald Kasal, is the descendant of a barely remembered Czechoslovakian immigrant that family legend says arrived in Chicago with a new wife to find a new life. After learning English and gaining his bearings, he moved to Iowa before the turn of the 20th century and bought a farm, and then another and another, until he was a respected and prosperous Iowan who raised grain, pigs, cattle, and strong, hardworking sons with equal success.

If you were lucky enough to know Gerald Kasal before he died in late April 2006, you could have asked him what kind of farmer he was. He would probably laugh and answer, “Apparently not good enough.”

By the time Brad came along in 1966, the economic worm had turned. Like many small farmers, Gerald Kasal found himself farming almost 400 acres in a race with an unkind fate. Prices were
perpetually down while costs were always rising. Over time the elder Kasal tried raising hogs, beef, milk cows, and grain to stay ahead in the agricultural game, but the luck and prosperity that had blessed his ancestors eroded away almost as fast as the land he farmed.

Soon after Brad joined the Corps, Gerald gave up farming. Sometime later, Brad's mother, Myrna, and Gerald split. Gerald referred to those unhappy events only as ancient history that he didn't want to discuss. Family business is private business in their households, and they expect others to respect that.

Nosy reporters won't learn much more by asking the locals. Aftonians prefer to brag about how Brad Kasal put their humble town on the map. Gossip in Afton is confined to friends who share over morning coffee at kitchen tables and the local convenience store. Only snippets are offered to strangers. They will say Gerald Kasal worked as hard as anyone to keep his farm, but small farmers didn't yet know how to compete with corporations. It didn't matter what kind of farmer he was. The heyday for small farmers had passed in Iowa, and they went under liked jumped checkers.

By the time Brad was in junior high school, he was old enough to understand that his father and friends lived to work and worked to live off waning fortunes. Even to a kid, it was evident that Brad's father was pouring his life into the earth so he could coax another crop out of the ground before the bank foreclosed and drove the family off the land. This hand-to-mouth existence convinced Brad he didn't want to be a farmer. He wanted to see the world as a Marine.

But what Brad wanted and what he got were two different things until he was old enough to vote with his feet. By the time Brad came along, the birth of another son was no longer extraordinary,
and he was expected to pull his own weight as soon as he was able to work. Randy, the oldest boy, was the alpha dog in the family and used his dominance to lord over his brothers until they were too big for him to bite without a fight, Gerald Kasal said. Whether it was the hard work or the occasional fraternal scrap that toughened Brad, he soon grew extraordinarily strong and straight in a part of the world where strong backs are as common as red barns.

Afton, Iowa, was a great place to grow up. The town's children were carefully watched while they made their way from kindergarten to high school graduation. The town was too small for big secrets, and kids were always found out when they pulled one stunt or another.

“Everybody knew if we did something we weren't supposed to. Somebody would tell Brad or my dad,” Brad's youngest brother, Kevin, remembers. “Somebody would stop by and mention whatever it was. We couldn't get away with too much.”

Hardly a week went by from fall to summer that the kids in Afton weren't entertaining their parents and neighbors with plays, band concerts, or sports. And when kids weren't entertaining their families and friends, they were usually working for them—baling hay, caring for livestock, planting crops, and working at the grain elevator for money that went for cars, school clothes, and a bit of pocket cash.

Brad labored on his dad's farm because he had no choice. “Brad was a hard worker,” Gerald said. “He was always working. As soon as he could do a man's work, he was out doing it. Brad was never one to sit around when there was a job to be done.”

In high school Brad worked as a busboy and cook at a little Mexican restaurant in Afton called Chello's. At 16, as soon as he
was old enough to buy a car, Brad got a job at another restaurant in nearby Creston called Lil' Duffers, a fast-food hangout all his friends visited for a handout. He started out on the counter and worked his way up to night manager, earning enough money to keep his car running and to buy nice clothes.

At Lil' Duffers Brad was generous to a fault, and his hungry friends never left without a free burger and fries, says Troy Tucker, one of Brad's well-fed buddies. “I was always showing up just before close to get a sandwich. Brad would give me something and then tell me to get out of there before he got fired. There would be a whole line of us getting free food. I used to wonder how he didn't get in trouble.”

Most folks in Afton agree the virtues of plain, country living that attracted their grandparents and great-grandparents to Iowa were still intact in the 1970s and '80s.

“It was a great place to grow up,” Brad says fondly. “We all hung out together. In the summer we hung out on the square in our cars, talking or driving around Afton. I had several really close friends I was usually with.”

Brad and his friends somehow managed to elude the more dangerous temptations of modern life. Their world was cars, girls, sports, and hanging out in Afton's tiny town square. Sometimes they skipped school and goofed off. Like kids of any era, they liked music and parties. During the long summers they drove around on the gravel backroads. If you listen to their stories long enough, you might find yourself humming the theme song from
Happy Days.

The town's one cop didn't bother them. “He kept us out of trouble but let us be kids,” Brad says. “If we did a burnout or a doughnut on Main Street when he was around, he'd flash his lights and shake his finger at us, but he was smiling when he did it, and we'd say, ‘OK, we'll tone it down.' We got along real well
with him. We respected him, and he respected us.”

Drugs were not an issue because nobody used them, or admitted to using them, and drinking was limited to some kids pounding down too many beers on a Friday or Saturday night.

“I hung out with the jocks, the average kids, and I was friends with the hoodlums,” he says. “Because I was well liked and popular, I didn't have peer pressure to do drugs or drink. I could hang out at the parties and be with everyone and not have to get involved.”

That didn't mean, however, that Brad Kasal was a choirboy or that he hung out with choirboys.

One of his best buddies during high school was Randy Cornelison, now a 41-year-old self-described “gearhead” who lives near Adel, a small town north of Afton. Cornelison owned his own body shop for years before giving it up to run heavy equipment. Today he is married and has two sons. In high school he got into more than his share of trouble.

Kasal describes Cornelison as his occasional nemesis as well as one of his closest high school friends. He claims Cornelison and Troy Tucker were at the root of most of his minor scrapes with trouble. The big ones, Kasal jokes, he managed on his own.

All who knew the infamous trio remember the eyes of the teachers fastening on them when a disturbance unexpectedly broke out in the halls of East Union High. Whether it was skipping school, riding bicycles through the halls, or playing “grab ass” in the classroom, the three of them were usually involved in it together.

Kasal remembers Cornelison as a big, gawky kid with a crazy sense of humor and a strong devotion to his two best friends. Cornelison in turn recalls Tucker as a “wild man” and Kasal as the quiet type.

“Troy was a fast-driving, tough-talking country boy who didn't mind egging on his buddies to stir up some shit on Saturday night when things got a bit dull,” Cornelison says. The three liked to play practical jokes on each other, get loud, and drive the nine miles to nearby Creston where they cruised the loop, driving aimlessly around on the main drag looking for girls or trouble or both.

Their behavior was nothing exceptional. Like millions of young men from Small Town, USA, fighting and fornicating were the two most popular pleasures of the day in the early '80s, although most of Afton's young men weren't usually successful in either pursuit. Kasal was an exception, Cornelison says. He backs up his assertions with stories from his private annals that present the trio as a cross between the Three Musketeers and the Three Stooges.

“Troy and Brad and I would be somewhere,” Cornelison says. “Brad was such a nice guy he would never cause any trouble, but he was a tough guy—I mean tougher than shit. We would try and get him in a fight. We would walk up to some guy and tell him, ‘That guy over there wants to fight you because he thinks you're a punk' or ‘That guy over there has been checking out your woman.' Something like that. But that was back in the good old days when after a fight you would get up and shake hands. Nowadays you'd get shot.”

More than 20 years later Kasal hasn't forgotten his nights with Randy and Troy. The memories still make him chuckle, a kind of rasping sound he makes when he is telling a joke or relating a fond memory. He claims his life would have been much quieter if it weren't for the antics of his buddies.

“I would be standing there drinking a soda at the refreshment stand somewhere,” he says, “and the next thing I know some big
guy would walk up and tap me on the shoulder and say, ‘Hey, I heard you want to fight me.' I'd think, ‘that damn Cornelison.' Just about every time we went out, he would try and get me in a fight.

“He would walk up to the biggest guy he could find and tell him I wanted to fight him. Right away, we would be heading to the bathroom or out in the alley or somewhere to fight, and I didn't even know the guy.”

Cornelison knew he was playing with fire. “Brad could kick me and Troy's ass at the same time,” he says. Kasal played football and was a standout wrestler, gaining a cauliflower ear in the process. He lifted weights constantly and ran for pure pleasure.

“We used to give him hell,” Cornelison says. “Troy and me were always hitting him or telling him we were going to kick his ass, or getting him in headlocks, and he never did anything to us. I think secretly he liked being a badass, even in junior high school. Brad was very timid and shy when you met him; once you open that door and unleash that beast, look out!”