Serving the Country Not Quite Theirs

Noncitizens enlist for some of the same reasons Americans do -- patriotism, adventure, money for school, job training. For Brown, serving was a way to say thank you to his second homeland.

The young, wounded veteran speaks the language of patriotic idealism. These days, it can sometimes sound tired, overused, cheapened by self-interest or self-righteousness. But not when it bursts forth so unself-consciously, from someone so young. Maybe it makes a difference that Brown speaks it with a foreign accent. Maybe this soldier can remind Americans of something they never had to think twice about.

"I think everyone should understand that the country is never going to be free without you helping," he says. "It's teamwork."

He does not agree with those who doubt the war. He cannot imagine the United States could commit an error as large as starting a war without good reason.

"I believe America always kept their word," Brown says. "If I were going to die, I believe I was going to die for the right reason, for a country that always kept their word."

He grew up in Brewerville, Liberia. His father was an accountant, his mother a homemaker.

The Browns suffered during the invasion and war with Charles Taylor's rebel forces in the 1990s. Once at a checkpoint, one of Brown's older sisters was raped. His mother was beaten. When the boy tried to go to the women's side, a rebel with a bayonet jabbed him near the collarbone.

Brown's mother came to America first, then arranged for the rest of the family to be admitted in 1999, Brown said.

"It was terrible for us," he says, recounting his story before dawn one recent morning at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He continues the tale later in the morning at Veterans Affairs headquarters downtown, where he volunteers.

Tall and slim in a coat and tie, Brown speaks haltingly of life in Africa but turns exuberant when the scene shifts to America. He remembers being surprised upon landing at New York's Kennedy International Airport with nothing but the clothes on his back: He had always pictured America as a kingdom in the sky, not on the ground.

The congregation of Bethel United Methodist Church in Woodbridge adopted the family of 13, renting and furnishing a house and feeding and clothing them for a little more than a year. "They were just fantastic people," says Fred Parish, the pastor.

Brown's father became a security guard at a car dealership; his mother became a home health aide.