Marine Lance Cpl. Nicklas J. Palmer

Remember Our Heroes

Marine Lance Cpl. Nicklas J. Palmer, 19, of Leadville, Colo.

Lance Cpl. Palmer was assigned to the 1st Combat Engineer Battalion, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif.; killed Dec. 16 while conducting combat operations in Anbar province, Iraq.

Summit Daily News -- Summit County, CO Colorado LEADVILLE - "This is the hardest thing ... I am just numb," Rachele Palmer said from her home Tuesday.

It had only been 48 hours after she heard the news of her youngest son, Nick.

Nick Palmer died in Iraq over the weekend as a Marine. He was killed by a sniper while patrolling in a Humvee in Fallujah at the time. He was 19 years old.

The weekend before the holidays, the last thing the Palmer's wanted to hear about was the death of their son.

Rachele and her husband Brad had returned from a holiday party Saturday afternoon when three Marines arrived at their door with the news.

"It was actually kind of funny at first," Palmer said. His father Brad, director of Lake County Road and Bridge, thought Jehovah's Witnesses were coming to the door and asked his wife to attend to them.

But when his mother Rachele peeked through the three little windows at the front and saw that they were Marines, she said she went completely numb.

"I couldn't tell you what their names had been because I couldn't hear them," she said. "They came in and asked me some questions. If his name was Nick, if his name was Palmer, if we had a son in the Marines. I was numb for a long time. It's the hardest thing ...

"Every word out of their mouth was adding up and getting worse," she said, "they told me he was shot, that he had died. I didn't know what to think ... I couldn't think."

Giant of the gridiron

The family moved to Leadville in 1995. Nick spent most of his life in Leadville.

He lived the true American lifestyle. He grew up in a rural mountain community with a father who loved football, a caring mother and an older brother. The rest of the extended family live in Montana.

The family activities revolved around football, watching it, playing it or dreaming about it.

"They watched football," his mother said. "Saturday, there's college ball, then Sunday, Monday and Thursday there's pro football. You watch football or you go to the kitchen and cook like I do. He watched football."

Nick played football from the time he was in seventh grade all through high school. With the help from his father, he lettered all four years.

"He ran offensive and defensive (lineman)," his mother said. "He didn't like to come to the sidelines very often but he would do it because he knew the other kids wanted to play. He was very generous that way."

As a junior, Nick was thinking about his future. He knew he was going into the military, his mother said.

"As a mother, I said, 'Oh, my god, no,'" she said when he told her he decided to be a Marine. "This was when the war was in full-blown motion. It's not like it hadn't started yet. But he knew this is what he wanted to do ... he must have dreamt about being a Marine ... and he signed up for it."

His father shared similar views.

He told him: "You know, you're going to Iraq then?"

Fit for the journey

Palmer left for boot camp in San Diego shortly after graduation.

The Palmer's would hear from their son when he first arrived in Iraq three to four times a week. He discovered a phone bank close to his base and used it frequently. But as the weeks passed, the Palmer's heard less and less from him.

"The calls would come a little further between because he was out on patrol and they had to go and do what they had to do," Rachele said. "It was a week, week and a half when we'd hear from him. It was hard not to hear from him."

He told his mother that he worked long hours with hard work. That was his duty as a Marine.

He trained for nearly the entire year before he entered the Marines. He wanted to be physically fit and prepared for the journey and the experience.

The preparations consisted of endless hours at the gym, jogging, hiking and swimming with friends.

He carpooled with fellow friends who joined the Marines and trained as a group.

"He lived in the weight room," his mother said. "At 10,200 feet, if it's not hard enough for running, he would toss 30 to 40 pound weights in his back pack and run with that. It was mind boggling to see.

"He wanted to be fit all year round."

A quiet, serious young man at home, Nick shared a more jovial, humorous side with his friends, his mother said.

A joker and humorist, his mother recalls camping and fishing trips he would take with his family and some of the funny things he would do but said "he was Mr. Serious at home."

"He was a polite, well-mannered good kid," Rachele said.

A shower of condolences

Visitors from around the globe are calling the Palmer's household sharing their condolences.

"This community is in mourning," said County Commissioner Ken Olsen. Olsen works closely with Nick's father at the county.

Within two and a half hours after the Marines left their front door, people showed up.

"Word spread across the U.S., total strangers are calling us, Marine families called," she said. "From the East to West Coast, the word is out. And if there is one, there's 200 who have come to the door."

The phones were ringing off the hook, landline and cellular phones, the doorbell ringing all day.

One visitor stopped by early Tuesday morning, asked if there was anything he could do, but Palmer told him no.

"I don't know what you can do," she said. "I don't even know what to do. Nobody knows what to do or what to say ... neither do I."

Flowers and flags started to collect at the Palmer home. And an area near the National Mining Hall of Fame and Museum, which is across from the Palmer home, has ben set aside for people to hang yellow ribbings and offer their support.

Leadville resident Carol Hill said Monday that the coverage of this war reminded her of Vietnam.

"When you're watching the news on the television, all you see are numbers and body counts," Hill said. "It's just like Vietnam. And it's sad."

Marine Lance Cpl. Nicklas J. Palmer was killed in action on 12/16/06.