Mourning Joe Jeffries

Kirk Spitzer is a reporter/producer for CBS News specializing in military affairs. He recently spent time with an Army Special Forces team in Afghanistan.

Joe's death has bothered me a lot. I spent 10 days last month with Joe and a team of Army Special Forces patrolling the rugged Afghan mountains. Joe was part of a two-man civil affairs/psychological operations team that was attached to our group, and I spent a lot time riding with him in a Humvee. We chatted from time to time and gradually I got to know him.

Joe wasn't an ordinary soldier. At 21, he was the youngest of our group, and his looks and outward shyness made him seem even younger. Although assigned to the special operations forces, he wasn't a hard-charging combatant: His job was to help win hearts and minds, and he seemed happiest handing out school supplies and chatting with small children in the villages that our group visited and, occasionally, raided.

What I remember most about Joe was his basic decency. He was just a really nice guy. He never had a bad word for anybody, never seemed to get upset at anything, never seemed to worry. Even when we were chasing down Taliban suspects or driving through tight mountain passes that were perfect for ambushes, Joe seemed to be calmly enjoying himself.

I liked Joe's grin. It was always there. Kind of small and sly, like a kid who's been caught stealing cookies but knows his mom won't really yell at him, because she loves him and in the end she'll let him have the cookies, and probably a glass of milk, too. Joe always had that look.

I suspect Joe that really liked being around the Special Forces – the rock stars of the U.S. Army. He stripped the insignia from his uniform, stopped shaving and let his hair grow out, just like SF boys. He took to wearing wrap-around sunglasses and an Afghan scarf, and he seemed thrilled when the Green Berets matter-of-factly asked him to stand guard at night.

Joe was quiet, until you got to know him. One night toward the end of the patrol, we built a fire and Joe got to talking. He told us about his hometown of Beaverton, Ore., and about his parents and about how he liked to race cars. But mostly he talked about his wife, who is expecting their first child. Joe talked about how they met while he was on leave from his first deployment, in Bosnia, and how beautiful she was, and how lucky he was to marry to her, and how happy he was that he was going to be a father. No one interrupted.

Later that night, Robert Ramon, an Army journalist who accompanied our group and became good friends with Joe, took out his laptop and showed pictures of his own wife, who is from Bosnia. Joe's wife has relatives from the same region. Joe pointed to the screen and told all the guys, "See, I told you all the women from there are really beautiful.""

"It made me feel good," Robert told me this week. "(But) I think it made him miss his wife even more, because he went on and on about her again."

Robert said Joe's death has hit him hard.

"Joe was a little different than most soldiers here. He seemed very young and so innocent about things," Robert said.

Robert said that Joe once told him that whenever he misbehaved, his mom would call him by his first and middle names – Joseph Allen.

"I would jokingly tell him, 'Joseph Allan! Damn, you sure talk a lot!'" Robert said. "He would laugh and smile as he sat there quietly after I'd say that. Soon he'd be talking a hundred miles an hour again. I wish now that I'd have just let him go on about it all. He was a joy to be around in this harsh country."

The area where Joe died, Zabul Province, is a dangerous one. It borders Pakistan and harbors lots of Taliban and their sympathizers. The mission of the Green Berets is to crisscross the region, in small groups, looking for bad guys who have been attacking government officials and aid workers. There's been a lot of that lately.

Last month, Joe was with a team of Green Berets and Navy SEALS returning to their base in Kandahar.

According to the Army account, Joe was in a Humvee with two Green Berets and a SEAL, when someone spotted a land mine in the road. They attempted to drive around it, but tripped a second, unseen device – a skillful trap laid by the Taliban. The explosion demolished the vehicle and killed all four men.

There was a ceremony at the Bagram airbase last week to remember Joe and those who died with him: Daniel Eggers and Robert Mogensen, of the Green Berets, and Brian Ouellette, a Navy SEAL.

About 300 members of a special operations task stood in formation under a flag flying at half-mast. The command sergeant major called the roll, and friends answered "killed in action" when they got to Joe's name, and Daniel's and Robert's and Brian's.

Part of the eulogy to Joe went like this: "He wore a smile like it was part of his uniform… We'll miss our brother always. But he will always be in our hearts and minds."

Joe is not the first soldier I've known to die in the fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. And I'm sure, sadly, he won't be the last. But I'll remember Joe, and I'll miss him, too.