‘Memorial Day is about the freedom’

Along Nassau Street residents, visitors and families celebrated with gratitude in remembering the fallen military service members of America’s armed forces during the Spirit of Princeton Memorial Day Parade.

American flags waved from people lined up on both sidewalks of Nassau Street as the parade marched for one mile to where it ended at Monument Plaza on May 24. Following the parade, a brief ceremony was held on the steps of Monument Hall that featured keynote speaker Sgt. Ret. Alfred Brennan, a former U.S. Marine Corps K9 handler.

In 2025, Brennan served as the parade’s grand marshal and ceremony’s featured speaker.

“Sgt. Brennan joined the Marines upon graduating St. Rose High School in 2007,” said Kam Amirzafar, co-chair of the Spirit of Princeton, which organizes the Memorial Day Parade and is a Princeton non-partisan committee dedicated to bringing people together. “After completing basic training and graduating from military police school, Alfred was selected as a working dog handler and was stationed at Camp Pendleton, California where he met his canine partner, Grief.

“In the summer of 2010, he deployed to Afghanistan with the largest number of military dogs since Vietnam through one of the worst fighting years in the global war on terror.”

Brennan remarked that events like this shows why the country is beautiful.

“For most Americans, Memorial Day is just really the start of summer, but for others it is a weekend filled with immense grief and a burden they carry for the rest of their lives,” he said, adding that he is blessed to share what Memorial Day means for him.

Brennan explained to the crowd that Memorial Day means something different to the men, women and families who feel the loss of a loved one that is sent overseas. He added, “Whatever their reasons they were called to serve. They had a higher calling and purpose that they answer to.”

While delivering his speech on the Monument Hall steps he detailed pivotal moments during his deployment to Afghanistan. One moment was when his K9 partner Grief was killed and another moment was when he was severely injured during their deployment in 2010 from an improvised explosive device (IED).

In the summer of 2010, on Aug. 4, one of Brennan’s buddies was on patrol. He noted that while on deployment their job was to clear the way and clear out the front saving lives behind them as IEDs had been a prominent threat in Afghanistan.

“..it was our job to find them and make sure everyone behind us went home. We found the first IED and then the second, but by the time the third one went off it was too late, and his buddy was evacuated and sent to Germany.

Three days later on Aug. 7, he succumbed to his severe injuries and died.

“His name was Cpl. Max Donahue, and he will never be forgotten,” Brennan said. “My buddy Max taught me about what dying in combat meant and every handler that we worked with understood that even in death we can never die.

“His death lit a fire in our hearts that still burns to this very day. It gave me the courage to get back out there and fight. Because as long as we still had air in our lungs and we were breathing we had a job to do and that job was to continue the fight that we were in.”

After Donahue was killed, as the days went on Brennan and Grief did their best to lead patrols and find bombs as one loss after another compounded. He described it as something they had to stomach and put behind them during the deployment.

On the morning of Oct. 24 in 2010 he called his wife and let her know he would not be able to call for a while as he was headed on to a long mission. That mission he was headed on is now known as Operation Dragon Strike, which was a mission to regain control over a southern province of Kandahar in Afghanistan that had been taken over by the Taliban.

“It started out like any other normal day going out there and we hear on the radio that there is a bomb that they found,” Brennan shared. “So, what we do is what they call a controlled detonation where they put a bomb in a place and blow it up. We moved on to another area, they found another one. So, we are sitting back, me and Grief are resting against the wall.”

While resting a solider next to Brennan was patting Grief and Grief was jumping on him. This solider and Brennan got to talking and sharing memories.

Then the normal day quickly changed. When the soldiers were moving to a safer distance for the IED controlled detonation, a different IED within seconds went off. Smoke and debris are everywhere, and Brennan describes turning around and Grief is missing in a cloud of smoke and debris.

“As I went up to check on him, I realized he was OK but was a little shaken up by the explosion,” he said. Brennan posted up security for an ambush and walked around to make sure the area was clear. As he walked around, he could see fellow soldiers taking down the body of the solider he had been sitting next to moments before, who he had shared memories with, and who had played with Grief.

The soldier’s name is Specialist Steven Dupont. “… just moments before he was just sitting there playing with Grief and that day he lost his life. Steven’s name will never be forgotten,” Brennan said.

The day was not over. Brennan and fellow soldiers had to stop for the night and get to a building where they would rest up.

He was with a captain, a sergeant major, and the medic with the unit along with some Afghan national army soldiers. After a door was taken down by Brennan and the captain, the sergeant major, who had scaled the wall of the compound came back to say he found a way in.

“Chuckling, I walked over to him to hand him back his rifle,” Brennan recalled and just “before I took my third step everything went white. It felt like I was flying through the air hundreds of times, ringing in my ears, then that flipping stopped and that ringing started to dim down and go away,” he added.

“I laid on the ground and waited to figure out what is wrong. I started to hear everyone talking – who is hit, who is down. I hear them call in a nine-line for a medivac helicopter to get me out of there. I hear them say one wounded and one killed.”

Hearing them say one wounded, one killed did not make sense to Brennan as he heard everyone talking and heard everyone’s voices.

“But the one thing I didn’t hear was them say, ‘Go help Grief, Grief come,’ or ‘It is OK buddy, it is going to be alright,'” he said. “It was at that moment I knew I lost my best friend.

“They got me out of there as quickly as possible and was able to go to Bagram (airfield in Afghanistan) and Germany and start my long process of recovery back home.”

Brennan acknowledged that initially he had a sour attitude about Memorial Day.

“If any other veteran who is here has lost somebody whether it was Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq you know what I’m talking about this is a somber weekend for us as we remember who we lost – our buddies, those Gold Star mothers, those surviving spouses,” he explained.

“I’m going to tell you today there is hope because there is a way to survive with grief and live with joy. You know this is something that needs to be embraced and needs to be remembered and needs to be honored. I remember those good times that we shared. It helps me not cry anymore but smile.”

Brennan shared he will spend the rest of his days honoring their memories until the day he dies.

“(Memorial Day) is about the freedom,” he said. “It’s about the freedom that all of us here share. It is about the freedom that is only paved with the ultimate sacrifice of the names I’ve said and those heroes. This is truly what Memorial Day is all about.”