Posted by David Roller on February 18, 2024:

On Saturday, July 29, Andrew Webber was killed while fighting in Ukraine. Andrew and I were West Point classmates, Ranger school buddies, and fellow Paratroopers in the 173rd Airborne, and we were both part of the small group of folks who have journeyed from War to Law, having attended law school and started practices after leaving Active Duty. Last year Andrew recruited me to the tech startup where I'm currently working. In January he resigned, somewhat abruptly, and then in May / June he traveled to Ukraine to fight against Russia's invasion. Not as a US Army officer, as a formal US Advisor, or even as someone working for a humanitarian NGO - he went as a volunteer infantryman. Just a guy who thought he had an obligation to contribute his efforts to what he saw as the good guys opposing the bad guys. When he told me he was considering heading over to Ukraine I tried to talk him out of it. I spent months trying to talk him out of it. I told him he had already served; had already heeded the call of duty; had already been shot at; had already proven himself in combat; had already done more than most; had nothing to prove; would be wasting his epic brain, unique perspective, off-the-charts empathy, and his Northwestern Law degree; and I begged him repeatedly to reconsider. I appealed to him as a father. But he just thought he was supposed to go. Andrew was 1 of 1. He was a different kind of human. He didn't have blood lust, and he wasn't seeking violence. Andrew was not a mindless "blow 'em up" kinda guy. He wasn't glory-seeking. But he despised Russian political and military leadership for so carelessly sacrificing so many for so little. Andrew understood right and wrong, and he saw good and evil on a grander scale and on a longer timeline than most. He was an epic historian, casually dropping clever references to obscure historical events while on conference calls or just in casual conversation. I think he saw this fight as necessary, and just, and he didn't want to regret not being a part of it. Maybe that's why he went over to Ukraine as a forty-year-old husband and father with a successful legal career. I can't fathom doing what he did. Maybe I'm scared. Maybe I'm too comfortable. Maybe I'm too tired or exhausted. But he did it with such confidence, urgency, determination, and focus. One minute we're debating an indemnification provision in a service agreement and the next he's messaging me from a World War I bunker in Ukraine while conducting live fire trench-clearing rehearsals with a Ukrainian military unit. It was all so surreal. After his unit successfully employed drones during an assault, we had a serious conversation about how useful quadcopter drones would have been while dropping mortars and artillery in the mountains of Afghanistan. Somehow, even after losing so many Soldiers and friends and mentors and classmates and colleagues in both Iraq and Afghanistan, I never even once considered Andrew could get killed in Ukraine. I thought that after leaving Iraq and Afghanistan our generation was done giving its blood. In the summer of 2001, before 9/11 changed everything, somehow our class had the foresight to choose as its motto, "Keeping Freedom Alive [in 2005]." Andrew was doing just that. But this is so devastating. So sad. I'm somehow simultaneously proud of him, jealous of him, angered by him, in awe of him, and confused by him, and I'm going to miss him. "And when our work is done, Our course on earth is run, may it be said, "Well done. Be thou at peace."

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