Nicholas Eischen non-combat death in Afghanistan

Medical technician dies in his sleep while serving at base in Afghanistan

By Garrett Therolf, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
January 13, 2008
They were up in the high country, floating across the lake in a houseboat. Nicholas Eischen wanted to know what his family thought he should do with his life.

He had worked at a pool service and at a few other short-term jobs. "All of them were things that didn't have a future to them," said his grandfather, Bob Pinion. "He was looking for a future."

By that time, in the summer of 2003, Eischen was already drinking the same beer as his father and grandfather, and listening to the same music -- "there are only two kinds," Pinion said, "country and Western" -- but he didn't want the same job as they had.

"His father and I," Pinion said, "are both plumbers. We didn't want him in the trade. He had better fish to fry. We didn't want him all broken up at 50 years old."

The clan from Clovis, adjacent to Fresno, gathered around hot dogs and steaks aboard the family's houseboat on Huntington Lake in the Sierra, helped him settle on a career in the Air Force.

Eischen enlisted in 2003, rising to the rank of senior airman. He was assigned to the 60th Medical Operations Squadron at Travis Air Force Base, southwest of Sacramento. His most recent posting was in Afghanistan at Bagram Air Base, about 25 miles north of Kabul, where he apparently died in his sleep Dec. 24. He was 24.
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