Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran Brett Evans: After three combat tours, a life of serving others

Ozark County native Brett Evans was a senior in Gainesville High School when the Twin Towers fell on Sept. 11, 2001. He was working a half-day at a local turkey farm as part of an FFA project when he learned what happened. Back at school that afternoon, watching reports of the devastating attack on classroom TVs, Brett and some of his classmates and friends talked about volunteering for the military immediately. 

Brett asked his parents, Steve and Teresa Evans, to sign papers allowing him to join the Army before he turned 18 on a deferred enlistment and then continue on to graduation. They refused. But when Brett turned 18 in January 2002, he went to Kansas City and enlisted on his own, signing up for a four-year tour of duty. He came back home and graduated, and then, while he waited for his August induction date, he joined area recruiters in strenuous physical training, including "repelling off some bluffs" in the Branson area, he said. 

On Christmas Day 2002, Brett arrived in Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, soon to leave on his first deployment to Kuwait and then Iraq with the 101st Airborne Division, trained in air assault. He was 19.

Twenty-four years later, Brett says today that he feels good about his military experiences, and he's proud to have served his country. But now, as the married father of three, he has a better understanding of his parents' reluctance to let him enlist early – and he's not sure how he would respond if one of his sons someday asked to do what he did.

"We need people, we need service members," he said. But he knows no parent wants to think about "what could happen if their son or daughter joins the military," especially during times of conflict. 

The last American troops left Iraq in September of this year, according to news reports, but many still serve in other countries in the Middle East. And now, during America's current war with Iran, those troops may be in increased danger.

Brett thinks of them and prays that they "have safe deployments," he said.

He knows what it's like to serve far from home. "When you're actually on the ground, it's just you and the guy next to you. I wasn't deployed with many females, but it's the soldier next to you, whoever that is. You don't think too much about the big picture," he said. 

'The experience of a lifetime' 

His own deployment came 18 months after 9/11, when American intelligence sources convinced President George W. Bush and other national leaders that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein held "weapons of mass destruction" that might be used against the U.S. and its Allies. Brett's regiment, the 502nd Infantry, Second Battalion, rolled into Iraq right behind the first wave of the American invasion in March 2003. Later, the 502nd was sent to protect the area around the deadly Baghdad airport.

Brett and his fellow soldiers were part of the hunt for Iraqi WMDs, sometimes searching door-to-door. They found several caches of traditional weapons, many of them "hidden in schools," Brett told former Times editor Betty Stanley for a March 3, 2004, story. "They knew we wouldn't blow up a school."

Brett's division moved around Iraq, sleeping wherever they could find a place – sometimes in holes they dug for themselves. Finally, they settled in a bus station. "We actually had cots," Brett said. "You can't believe how good they felt after all those nights on the floor or ground."

One pleasant experience during Brett's first tour in Iraq was getting to distribute 90 boxes of school supplies to Iraqi children. In an earlier 2003 Times story about the yellow ribbons tied on trees and fence posts at his parents' home – and many other places around the country – Brett's mom, Teresa Evans, said that, when Brett called home from Iraq (for the first time in two months), he talked a little about what he was doing there and asked for wet wipes and junk food. Then he asked for something else: school supplies for the Iraqi children.

In response to Brett's request, shared in the Times, Kohl Gordon, a 15-year-old Isabella girl, organized a local drive to collect the school supplies and then shipped them to Brett overseas. Brett and his fellow soldiers passed them out at schools or to families "that didn't seem to have much money," he told Stanley later. "They were surprised and very thankful."

Brett was awarded a medal in recognition of the gifts he distributed. As soon as he got home, he gave the medal to Kohl.  

Despite intensive searches, no WMDs were found in Iraq, but American and Allied troops remained there for several years to stabilize the country's government, promote democracy and fight a growing and increasingly violent threat of ISIS terrorism.

In February 2004, Brett's parents, along with his aunt and uncle, Halbert and Vicki Smith and their son Titus, were at Ft. Campbell when Brett's battalion returned after almost a year in Iraq. Their joy and relief at having him back on American soil lasted about a year; then Brett headed back to war. He was honorably discharged soon after the end of his second tour. He described the happy homecoming in another Veterans Day story published 18 years ago in the Nov. 5, 2008, edition of the Times. 

In that story, he called his two tours in the war zone “the experience of a lifetime. I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it,” he said, “but I can’t say anything negative about it either. If I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t change anything.”

At that time, in 2008, Brett had been discharged for three years but was still one year shy of completing his eight-year-total commitment to the Army, which included four years of active duty followed by four more years in the Inactive Ready Reserve. In 2009, he was called up again, and soon he was headed back to Iraq for his third deployment. First assigned to Ft. Benning, Georgia, he was attached to the 2nd Battalion 198th Armored Regiment in the Mississippi National Guard's 155th Armored Brigade Combat Team, which would serve another year in Iraq.  

 A desire to serve

Brett joined the Army as soon as he could after 9/11. "I wanted to serve my country," he said. After his final discharge, he wanted to find a career that would let him continue his service to others. In that search, he was inspired by the late Dave Goodnight, longtime funeral director at Clinkingbeard Funeral Home in Gainesville. "I knew Dave well and went to church with him. I thought a lot of him," Brett said. 

In 1999, after Brett's maternal grandfather Roy Smith died, the family's thank you note published in the Sept. 29, 1999, edition of the Times extended a special thanks to Goodnight "for giving special memories of Pappa to Brett and Titus." 

"He was so good and helpful when Grandpa passed," Brett said. Watching Goodnight, "I thought that was something I wanted to do," he said.

And what special thing did Goodnight do that meant so much to teenage cousins Brett and Titus when their Pappa died? "He let us ride in the hearse with him to the cemetery," Brett said.

Brett had worked in construction between his second and third deployments. After he returned from Iraq for the last time in 2010, Titus, knowing Brett's interest in Goodnight's profession, told him about a program offered at Arkansas State University's Mountain Home campus – mortuary school, leading to an associate's degree in funeral science.

Brett used the GI Bill to help pay for his education and also worked for Roller Funeral Home in Mountain Home while in college. He graduated in 2012 and became a licensed embalmer and funeral director. Since then, he has worked at Clinkingbeard Funeral Home's Ava and Gainesville sites. 

It's a very rewarding job, Brett said. "It's good to be able to help families through one of the most difficult times they can face, losing a loved one. It's being a servant to others."

Remembering 

the forgotten ones

In 2016, Brett married Britney Coy, and today they live in Ava with their three children: Emmett, 10; MaryEmma, 8; and Alexander, 1. He's been diagnosed with service-related asthma, probably from breathing in all the sand, smoke and other airborne particles in Iraq. After his first deployment, he told Betty Stanley he had "seen a lot of bad things I'll never forget." He hasn't forgotten those terrible things, but he hasn't been troubled by the post-traumatic stress syndrome that many combat veterans suffer – although for a while after he returned home from combat, "things on the side of the road bothered me, thinking of bombs," he said. 

Besides his work at the two funeral homes and his roles as a busy dad and husband, Brett continues to serve his fellow veterans by being a lifetime member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars post and finance officer for the American Legion post in Ava.

In addition to his official work for the funeral home, Brett often helps other American Legion members, and sometimes active military personnel, perform the rituals of military honors rendered at veterans' burials, including 21-gun salutes and playing Taps. 

During Hootin an Hollarin in front of the Main Stage in Gainesville, he and fellow veterans Billy Holt and Mark Badgett demonstrated the POW/MIA Table Memorial service to remind viewers of the still-empty chair at the tables of families who mourn the unreturned remains of prisoners of war and troops missing in action. The ceremony is a visual reminder of the VFW's nationwide effort, working with veterans' families, to fund expeditions overseas to find graves of America's missing warriors and bring their remains home for burial. 

It's another way Brett continues to serve others, especially those who served.