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Upon the headstones at the Dayton National Cemetery in southwest Ohio are the names of the numerous wars fallen soldiers buried here have fought in: Korea, Vietnam and Iraq.
At the center of this sprawling, manicured cemetery for veterans and service members, ground staff and three machines this week have cleared space for a new grave site. It will be the place where one of the first victims of a new US conflict – the 2026 war on Iran – will be laid to rest on Friday.
Capt Curtis Angst, 30, of the 121st air refueling wing, from Wilmington, a 45-minute drive away, died in an aircraft accident in skies over western Iraq on 12 March that saw all six airmen aboard killed when their plane collided with another US aircraft.
While facing danger in the line of duty is something service members sign up for, some veterans are questioning the merit and legality of the administration’s war on Iran, which was launched without congressional approval or much in the way of Tehran presenting the US as a clear and present danger.
All the while, it is communities in three midwestern states – Ohio, Iowa and Kentucky – that find themselves paying an especially high cost for the Iran war, with nearly half of the 13 US service members to have been killed in action so far hailing from these states.
Bob Baylor, a colonel from Ohio and veteran of the war to liberate Kuwait from Iraq in 1991 and Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, says he and others are confused about the conflict.
“I still don’t know what our objective is. As a colonel, as a graduate of the Air War College, one of the first things you learn is what are your objectives so that you know what forces need to be deployed,” he says.
“It’s absolutely tragic. What is our objective? We are losing people.”
Baylor’s two daughters went to school with Capt Angst in Wilmington, Ohio.
“One of the things I’m hearing is that people don’t want us to get into another war. They want to support the actual troops that are fighting but as far as the national defense level and the president, I think that’s where there are a lot of questions about what are we doing, why are we there, why aren’t we getting the heck out of there.”
Last weekend, an estimated eight million people across the country took to the streets to protest the war on Iran and other policies imposed by the Trump administration. Some Ohio Republicans have taken the unusual move of defying Donald Trump by voting in favor of a measure to call for the end of the attacks on Iran.
Benjamin Pennington and Ashley Pruitt grew up less than 30 minutes from each other in Glendale and Bardstown in central Kentucky. While neither likely ever knew of each other, they will be forever linked as the first US service members to die within days of each other in the Iran conflict.
Pennington was killed in an Iranian attack on a US base in Saudi Arabia on 1 March. Pruitt was one of six airmen to die in the aerial collision that killed Angst and others in Iraq 12 days later.
“We are very cognizant the threat of what a nuclear Iran could be. We just believe that all diplomatic efforts were not exhausted and that the agreement that was in place by President Obama was either sufficient or at least a great beginning for keeping peace,” says Kenny Fogle, chair of the Democratic party of Nelson county and a 25-year veteran of the US air force and Kentucky air national guard. Fogle lives in Bardstown, the same town that Pruitt is from.
“We have serious questions as to the imminent threat, the absence of congressional involvement, the actual reasoning behind the initial attack and the lack of consultation with our Nato allies.”
More than 3,500 people in Iran have been killed in the US-Israel war, which began on 28 February and has sent global oil prices rocketing. Meanwhile, more than 1,200 Lebanese people have been killed in Israel’s attacks and partial occupation of its northern neighbor.
Two Iowans from neighboring communities outside Des Moines were among six US service members killed and dozens injured in Kuwait on 1 March after an Iranian drone attack on a makeshift office space.
“This is a war of opportunity, not a war of necessity. The further we get into it, the more we’re learning that there wasn’t really a plan,” says Joe Stutler, an Iowa veteran who served in the military for nearly 10 years, including during Operation Desert Storm.
“If it’s that damn important, deploy Barron [Trump]. Put Barron out there on the front with the rest of them,” Stutler says of the president’s youngest son.
The political climate unfolding in Iowa, which last voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in 2012 and has one of the highest percentages of independent voters in the country, could be troubling for Trump and his party in upcoming primary and midterm elections this year.
In a special election last August, a Democrat won an Iowa senate district carried by Trump by double digits in the 2024 presidential election, causing Republicans to lose their supermajority in Iowa’s state senate. In a state that produces more corn than any other in the country, thousands of farmers have been hit by high diesel andfertilizer prices resulting from the Iran conflict.
In Ohio, Baylor notes that while Wilmington is broadly a conservative community where more than three-fourths of voters in the town’s Clinton county backing Trump in the 2024 election, satisfaction with the president’s actions may be in decline.
“Without clear-cut objectives, we could find ourselves in a situation that keeps escalating with no clear exit,” he says. The deployment of around 2,500 marines without adequate support forces doesn’t make much sense to him.
“The department [of defense] and secretary of defense and the president really don’t seem to understand what forces they need to use because I don’t think they understand what it is they are trying to do.”
Curtis Angst was married for just 17 months before he died.
