Gold Star Mom's 8 Years of Hell From Lies About Son's Last Day

A soldier's war lie unravels 8 years later, opening old wounds
LOSS AND LIES
Stars and Stripes
By Travis J. Tritten
Published: September 3, 2015

Sgt. Christopher Wilson’s mother had no reason to distrust the soldier and his vivid story of her son’s death in Afghanistan.

Spc. Brandon Garrison found her in the dark days afterward and provided the details — the details a mother fears but needs — of Wilson’s last moments after a Taliban attack in Korengal Valley in March 2007.

The futile attempt to save Wilson, the blood, the coldness of imminent death. It was all there in Garrison’s account, and he provided the memories she clung to for years.

“I just needed to know. It is a knife wound so deep you just have to know every aspect or you can’t breathe,” Wilson’s mother, Ilka Halliday said.

Except none of it was true.

Garrison’s war lies are unraveling, eight years later, after soldiers who were with Wilson when he died came forward.

Garrison was not by Wilson’s side when he died, and had instead spent his Afghanistan deployment inside the wire as a vehicle parts clerk.

The false story of the infantry soldier’s death has exposed the pain such deceit can cause for survivors. For Wilson’s mother and his family, the sting of lies and loss has not been diminished by the passing of years.

For the past eight years, Halliday believed Garrison’s story about her son’s death. She wants him to tell her he lied.

“I would like him to look me in the eyes the same way he looked me in the eyes when he told me my son died in his arms,” she said.

Sometimes there is anger. The sunglasses — he could not even take off his sunglasses for the television apology, she said. Or say Christopher’s name. Once a simple phone call would have been enough, though not now.

Halliday said she is trying to find reasons not to hate Garrison, and she cannot believe he lied to her out of malice. She remembers the “sweet boy” she knew during 2007, the worst year of her life. She remembers the Garrison whom she said named his baby son after Christopher.

“I realize he is sick,” she said. “I knew that he had mental issues due to what he had gone through. … I took him into my heart because I had no reason not to trust him.”

As a mother who lost a soldier son, it is hard to stop caring for others wounded in the war.

“I don’t want his life to go straight down the toilet,” Halliday said. “I don’t want another life to be destroyed.”

But the ordeal has reopened a painful, barely closed wound for Wilson’s family.

“She said to me, ‘It’s been eight years that I’ve been in hell,’ ” said Katrina Evans, Wilson’s sister and Halliday’s stepdaughter.

Evans, who lives in Florida and is married to a disabled veteran, said she sent Garrison a message on Facebook calling him out. He blocked her, too.

Wilson’s grave marker at Arlington National Cemetery. COURTESY OF SHANE WILKINSON

NEW HOUSE, NEW DOG
The TV news camera panned up the length of Garrison as he stood leaning on a cane in February 2015 near his home in the Kansas City area. A local nonprofit had rushed an Austrian Shepherd service dog named Taz to the disabled veteran’s side for emergency support to help him cope with his war injuries and the recent death of his father, who was also his caretaker.

The donation was part of the local outpouring for the young veteran. In 2014, Garrison stood in front of a crowd of 50,000 gathered for a Memorial Day celebration at Kansas City’s Union Station to accept the keys to a donated home. It was given through a program to house veterans called Roofs for Troops run by the nonprofit Nehemiah Community Reinvestment Fund, which did not return requests for comment.

He was handed a big paper key as a symbol of the community’s support for his military service.

“Remembering all the people who have lost their lives,” Garrison said at the time when asked by a local news crew what the day meant to him.

The dog, house and attention came as Garrison began speaking publicly about his PTSD and the raft of ailments he suffered following his return from Afghanistan, including TBI that caused bouts of vertigo.
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