Widow of U.S. Soldier Killed in Iraq Recalls Husband's Desire to Return Home

The widow of one of the four U.S. soldiers killed in the Middle East amid the recent escalation in the Iran war has told how her husband longed to return home to be with his family as the Iraqi base where he was stationed came under heavy bombardment.

Sgt. Michael Emmanuel Swinton, 30, was killed on July 19 at the Erbil Air Base in northern Iraq during a controlled detonation of an Iranian drone, the Defense Department said, leaving behind his wife Jamiah Swinton and their four-year-old daughter.

President Donald Trump, whose bombing campaign began on February 28 and has so far claimed the lives of 18 U.S. service members, said Wednesday that the fallen soldiers shared his view that Iran cannot be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon.

But his heartbroken widow would not be drawn on that notion in an interview with The New York Times, and instead painted a picture of a devoted husband and father who just wanted to be reunited with his family in Spring Lake, North Carolina.

“There was no peace,” the 27-year-old said of the base where Sergeant Swinton was stationed. “And he would tell me he wanted to come home so bad.”

Sergeant Swinton was on a year-long deployment in the Middle East and had not seen his wife and daughter since, the longest they had been apart since they married in 2021. The couple hoped his deployment to Iraq would be his last.

The mom had also served in the Army, where she met her husband in 2020 on deployment to Bahrain, and she left the military in 2023.

On video calls with her husband, Jamiah Swinton recalled that she could “always tell” when “something was going on,” and “he just looked so tired.”

Their final call was short but “extra loving,” she told the Times, with the doting father asking to speak to his daughter, who was at pre-school. “Everything he did — the way he spoke, his voice, everything — I just, I love him,” she said.

Four days after the call, the dreaded knock at the door came to inform Jamiah Swinton that her husband had been killed.

“Nobody can tell you how a military career will go,” she told the Times. “There’s so much uncertainty, and you have to be strong enough to go along with it and hope that it will turn out OK.”

Jamiah Swinton attended the dignified transfer at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Wednesday, with her four-year-old, who asked her a heartbreaking question at the ceremony as her father’s casket went by, draped in the American flag.

“When they were transferring Michael, she said: ‘Is that my Dada in that box?’” the mom recalled to the Times.

The ceremony made the mom feel “both supported and overwhelmed” at the same time, she said.

Trump described the occasion as “one of the hardest things to do as a president,” and went on to claim that the fallen soldiers supported his view that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon.

“They said, and all of them said very strongly, ‘We can’t let, we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. They won’t have a nuclear weapon,’” the president said. “So, we’re going to honor them, and one of the hardest things to do — for me, it’s one of the hardest things to do as a president — but has to be done.”

The three soldiers also honored Wednesday who died last week were Tyler James Feehan, 25, Isabella Gonzales, 19, and Angel S. Rampersad, 28.

After news of Sergeant Swinton’s death, his widow posted a heart-wrenching picture of her late husband holding their little girl on social media. “I didn’t think this would be the last time I ever saw you. I have no words,” she wrote.

“I feel so robbed,” she wrote in a post Friday. “We made so many plans… I couldn’t wait for you to get home.”