The single image that introduced Colorado Congressman Jason Crow to the nation first appeared on January 6th, 2021. It continues to be shown today when he appears on national television speaking on military matters or when he’s featured locally talking about the things affecting Coloradans.
In the image, you see Crow, laser-focused helping a fallen colleague overcome by the threat of insurrectionists trying to breach the doors of the House of Representatives. It wasn’t Crow’s first time facing a literal enemy, but this time it was a domestic enemy. The horrific moment represents but a single frame in the day Donald Trump calls “a day of love.
In a previous life, the three-term Democrat who represents the state’s 6th Congressional District, was an Army Ranger in the 82nd Airborne. But the smell of war—or insurrection—is something Crow knows well, having deployed three times to hot zones in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Born in Wisconsin, Crow first joined the Army National Guard straight out of high school. “I first enlisted,” Crow said in a recent phone interview, “as a way to pay for college.” But, like a lot of altruistic and adventure-driven young men and women, the mission soon became far more sharply focused. It became, he said, “something bigger than myself,” and the beginning of a “journey of service to country.”
He transitioned from the Guard and the role of citizen soldier to full-time soldier. Crow found his then life-calling. It was in the Army, the 24/7 Army and not the once-a-month call of duty.
There he took it up a notch, some might say, several notches. He volunteered for Ranger school. But despite the brutal training required to become a Ranger, training that washes out even the biggest, the strongest and the toughest, Crow said it was perfect preparation for the moment he knew would come, the proverbial ‘baptism by fire.’ The ‘moment’ would arrivesoon after pinning on his Ranger badge.
It arrived March 3rd, 2003, in a place called Samawah, a city unknown to most Americans, one situated next to a river whose historic nameis far more familiar, the fabled Euphrates. “We were given the mission of clearing the city,” recalled Crow. It was, at least to anyone who knows combat, also the place and moment when the (expletive) gets real.’
Today, no longer the battle-weary young captain, Crow still remembers the endless sounds, the smells, the images of that day. “It was the machine guns opening up…radios crackling.”
The screams of older men, younger ones, too. There was also the silence that ebbed and flowed like slow moving shadows. It was by no means a quick-strike battle.
“We fought for hours,” Crow remembered. The memory of Samawah is invisibly etched on the Bronze Stars, the medals that later rained down on Crow and his team for the valor put on full display that one interminably endless and bloody day.
Crow is today one of 80 veterans out of 435 members in the House of Representatives, a number that also includes seven women who have served. It is a different time, he said, a different world with different priorities. It is a time when too many, the three-term Congressman says, want to run the country, but too few are willing to do the dirty work that goes along with it.
When the ‘greatest generation,’ returned from World War II, it changed the nation, Crow says. One of Congress’s most significant acts after the war was the passage of the G.I. Bill, a single piece of legislation that so positively impacted the lives of millions of veterans, their families and, perhaps, the course of the nation. “It helped reform and change our country.” The G.I. Bill continues to play an important role in the post military lives of veterans.
While the distance between Crow’s workplace, the House of Representatives, and Arlington National Cemetery—perhaps the nation’s most hallowed ground—is only seven miles, there are constant reminders for Crow that forever bind him to the soldiers he once went to war with and the many sacrifices each made to the nation.
“Yeah,” he sighs as he thinks about those long ago moments and the young man who once wore the uniform, the young man he once was. “It does seem surreal. It never leaves you. It is seared into you as a person, (changes) your view of the world, seeing what humans can do to other humans.”
Crow, a University of Denver Sturm College of Law graduate, says being a veteran is as significant a part of his résumé as his job serving the 6th Congressional District. He says, if at all possible, he will take part in as many veterans’ events in the district that he can. “I’ll go and I’ll participate,” including being present at those that might take him to Fort Logan, Colorado’s military burial ground.
One thing he says he’ll also do this Veterans Day and one that won’t require an official presence is just picking up the phone. “I’ll just reach out and call a buddy who served and just chat.”
