The Cost of Cowardice: When PPE Sat in Boxes and Soldiers Died

In war zones, danger is expected. What no one expects, or should have to, is that the real threat won’t come from the enemy, but from inaction, bureaucracy, or worse… self-preservation disguised as leadership.

While deployed to Afghanistan, my husband’s unit was stationed near a burn pit. The toxic smoke was thick, acrid, inescapable. Everyone knew it was dangerous. You didn’t need a medical degree to figure that out, though ironically, the colonel’s wife was a physician at the community hospital back at Fort Campbell.
They also knew PPE (personal protective equipment) was available. Packed. Crated. Sitting in a conex like unopened life rafts on a sinking ship.

But they were told not to unpack it.

Why? Because, allegedly, if that PPE was opened, the commanding officer might be financially responsible for it. Not operationally. Not morally. Financially. So instead, it sat unused while soldiers inhaled poison day after day.

A then-colonel, now working in the Pentagon, stood in front of my husband’s unit and told them they “did not need PPE.” No science. No concern. Just a decision rooted in cost control and liability avoidance over human life and common sense.

My husband is dead now. Stomach cancer. Linked to toxic exposure.

That colonel? He’s alive and well. Still in uniform. Still shaping policy. Still avoiding responsibility.

Let me be clear: this wasn’t a mistake, it was a choice. A deliberate one. A choice to prioritize inventory over lives, optics over outcomes, and logistics over leadership. It’s the kind of decision that echoes through a broken system, a system more concerned with safeguarding supply reports than safeguarding soldiers.

Military readiness is a phrase we hear often. But how “ready” are we if our troops are denied basic protection while standing in a toxic fog? How can we pretend to honor service if we don’t even value survival?

This isn’t about revenge. If it were, I’d name the colonel publicly. This is about truth. About accountability. About ensuring no other family buries their loved one because someone feared a supply chain audit more than the consequences of silence.

We send our troops into harm’s way with the promise that we will do everything we can to protect them.

That promise was broken. And it continues to be broken every time this story is ignored, buried, or denied.

The PPE sat in boxes, and my husband died.