Military Man Blogs About His Own Death  

Maj. Andrew Olmsted blogged about his life in the military for more than five years. He was killed Jan. 3 in Iraq.


(Jan. 7) -- Andrew Olmsted, a United States Army major who wrote an online blog for The Rocky Mountain News, prepared for the possibility of his death by writing a 3,000-word piece.

“I’m dead,” he wrote in July 2007 as he arrived in Iraq for an 18-month tour of duty. “But if you’re reading this, you’re not, so take a moment to enjoy that happy fact.”

The major, who was 38, was killed Jan. 3 by small-arms fire from insurgents in Sadiyah, 100 miles northeast of Baghdad. The next day, a fellow blogger published Major Olmsted’s eloquent essay, leading to an outpouring of comments from more than 1,000 readers. His blog became exponentially more popular in death than in life, garnering more than 100,000 page views on Saturday.

Major Olmsted was one of the first “milbloggers,” an Internet term for members of the military who blog. Thousands of readers had followed his posts for more than five years, first on AndrewOlmsted.com and later on the Web site of The Rocky Mountain News, a newspaper in Colorado.

While bloggers have died in war zones before, several prominent military bloggers said they could not recall any previous instances of posthumous blog entries. Major Olmsted’s final post interspersed quotes from Plato and the movie “Team America” with reflections on his life and requests from his readers. He specifically asked that his death not be used for political purposes.

“We’re all going to die of something,” Major Olmsted wrote in his final post. “I died doing a job I loved. When your time comes, I hope you are as fortunate as I was.”