
From kindergarten on, Oliver J. Brown and Brandon Johnson were more like brothers than friends.
They played Little League together, graduated from the same high school in 2004, biked and hunted together, and enlisted together. They planned to be each other’s best man.
Brown, 19, of Carbondale, Pa., was killed Sept. 28 in Ramadi when his vehicle came under attack. He was assigned to New Milford.
The news stunned Johnson. “Physically he is OK,” said Lisa Johnson, Brandon’s mother. “Emotionally he is a wreck. ‘I lost my best friend. I lost my brother,’ he told me.”
Brandon’s father, Robert Johnson, remembers when the two signed up for the National Guard.
“Oliver joined and Brandon said, ‘I want to go with you.’ They joined together because they didn’t want to be alone. They even asked the recruiter to make...