15 July 2025

Karenni State, Burma

Dear friends,

It is with sadness that we announce the death of one of our best Rangers, Oo Reh, who was killed by a Burma jet airstrike on June 30, 2025, in Pasaung, Karenni State, Burma, as he was saving and evacuating a landmine victim.

The victim had stepped on a Burma Army landmine in an open, exposed area, and his foot was blown off. We had been on foot in this area all day, doing multiple evacuations under fire, when the Burma Army retreated mostly off of the hill. That made it possible for us to bring a vehicle up to make a faster evacuation. For two days prior, Oo Reh had been driving the evacuation vehicle and picking up wounded people while under fire. Sometimes as we were driving, we were under direct rifle, machine gun, RPG and mortar fire. Bombers and jet fighters also attacked us. 

Whenever I went with Oo Reh on an evacuation, I would jump in the vehicle with him, smile, say a prayer, and pat him on the back. He would drive away at a controlled speed with a casual smile on his face. I never saw him ruffled or stressed. On his final run, we made it up to the top of the hill and saw the landmine victim. When we jumped out of the vehicle, we were told right away by one of his friends, “Don’t step back. There are many mines there.” I looked back and could see where the ground was disturbed. On the other side, I saw a hole where someone had already stepped on a mine.

The Burma Army has laid thousands of M14 landmines in this area, and they are a tremendous hazard. In the three days prior to this, we had carried out four men who lost their feet to landmines. At this point in the battle, there were more than 250 wounded and 26 killed. It was a brutal struggle as the Karenni tried to push the Burma Army out of the Pasaung area.

During one of the lulls in the battle, we conducted a children’s program with villagers who used to live in this town. They all were asking, “How much longer until we can go back home? We’ve been here four years in hiding, yet the planes still sometimes find us in our hiding places. We have almost nothing left. We are praying to go home. Thank you so much for risking your lives to help us get our homes back.”

During the children’s program, Oo Reh was making the kids laugh with other Rangers. They were also making the parents laugh too and this was one of the great joys of the program. As my wife Karen said, “The kids go back and forth between sad and glad. But the parents always feel the weight of caring for their children, and the seeming hopelessness of their future. So to see them belly laugh, clutch their heads with laughter, and roar and giggle, is a great joy.”

It was also healing for us, as we had been in three days of constant battle up until this point. And the week before, we had been involved in another three-day stretch of battle where more than 58 people were wounded and seven killed.

Now I was on top of the hill with Oo Reh, where the vehicle couldn’t reverse because of the landmines on both sides of the road. So, we loaded the victim in the back of the truck with some of the medics on our team including Coby, a volunteer for FBR, and my son, Peter. Peter had been with me throughout the last two months at every front line to help organize, communicate, and carry the wounded. It was a blessing to be with my son, and at the same time, it made me even more scared of what could happen to him. But, he’s a grown man who carefully prays about his decisions, and he felt he should come.

Our daughter Sahale, who recently graduated from nursing school, was back at the casualty collection point (CCP) to help support and do hands-on medicine. Suuzanne and Karen were also back helping at the CCP. Whenever there was a break, they would lead the GLCs.

The CCPs were not safe either. The very first one we used was bombed twice, and we were fortunate to not get hit. We had to regularly move our CCPs, and be very careful in how we moved casualties in and out, so we could wouldn’t be compromised.

As the team was trying to get the vehicle backed up and turned around to take the patient back to the CCP, we heard the sound of a diving jet. Our team yelled, “Jet fighter, jet fighter, airstrike, airstrike!” Most of our team was loaded up in the vehicle with wounded patients except for me and three others. I was outside at the front of the vehicle as it began to back up quickly. So, I and the three others ran together alongside the vehicle. When the jet began to dive in on its bombing run, the three others I was with hit the ground. But I was right next to the vehicle, and felt the need to stay with our team who was inside. As the jet dove down further, I felt the rush of a bomb come over my right shoulder, and over the vehicle. It exploded about two yards past the vehicle, which was three to four yards from me. The explosion rocked me, but didn’t knock me down. Miraculously, not one fragment hit me. I was amazed and kept running. I looked up and thought, “If I wasn’t hit, then the people in the vehicle should be okay.” But as I watched, the vehicle careened backwards off the road and crashed into some trees. Everyone was thrown around, but no one was badly hurt.

The jet turned in for a second dive and gun run. I yelled, “Everybody down, everybody down! Get out of the vehicle!“ Everyone got down, but I saw Peter run around to the side of the vehicle to pull someone out. He yelled back at me in a voice of desperation and anguish, “Wounded, dad! There’s wounded!“ I looked and, with horror, realized he was pulling Oo Reh out of the truck as his blood gushed out. Oo Reh had been hit by a fragment of the bomb in the middle of his face, and it tore all the way down to his throat. He had died quickly. Bwe Mu, Aung Zaya, and other team members went to help Pete get Oo Reh off the road.

The jet fighter came down a third time, shooting, but missed us. Bwe Mu got the vehicle turned around, and then raced down the mountain with the landmine victim and our dead Ranger. We were in shock, as this had happened towards the very end of the battle.

Although the Burma Army was retreating, the airplanes never let up. During this battle, there were five different kinds of jets overhead every hour, and more than 150 airstrikes. This was in addition to Y-12 bombers that dropped more than 500 120 mm mortar bombs from the sky. And that was on top of the regular small arm, machine gun, and mortar fire from the Burma Army position. 

Eight of our Rangers were wounded while carrying casualties out, but Oo Reh was the only one killed. Shortly after he was killed, the Burma Army completely retreated from the hill, and the Karenni gained half of Pasaung. The Burma Army remained in the lower part of town in a different position, but to the Karenni, this was a big victory.

For us, we wanted it to be a big victory, but it was very hard to consider it that because of the loss of Oo Reh. Everyone has loved him since he first graduated from FBR training in 2022. He had served nonstop on missions since then, and was engaged to be married later this year. His loss has left a gaping hole in his family, with his fiancé, and with us. We all asked, “Why? Why right when the battle was almost over? And why when he was doing something good?”

When the Burma Army had pulled back, some of our team went with Oo Reh’s body to conduct a funeral with his family. Others had to go on other missions. For me and my family, it meant getting ready to go back to the U.S. to send the kids back to school.

Back at our home, we had a wonderful Fourth of July, and then received more shocking news. More than 100 people had perished in the floods in Texas, many of whom were young children in Christian summer camps there. I was thinking about this, while also thinking about the miracles that we encountered during the battle multiple times. There were mortars and bombs landing very close to us. In one case, a bomb landed just five yards away from us, and we weren’t killed. There were many miracle stories like this to share, but how could we tell them when our friend had died? And how could we tell them while children in Texas had died from a natural disaster? One of my pastor friends, who lost his own child a few years ago, said to me, “All stories are God stories. The good ones, and the bad ones. God is bigger than all of it. God does the miraculous, and saves us many times. And other times, he lets some of us die. But they’re all God stories. He redeems everything.”

I was reminded of something God told me a long time ago: “Nothing truly precious is eternally lost.” That means we really don’t know what’s going to happen, but we need to honestly tell the stories – both the ones where we witnessed miracles, and the ones where we did not. We celebrate God’s miracles together, and we mourn together during the times they don’t happen. I believe God mourns with us. And even though life is fatal, it is not final. Despite whatever happens on this earth, nobody lives forever in this body.

The day after Oo Reh died, I received a message from a Karenni pastor. He said, “Now Oo Reh gets to be with Jesus!” That’s true. When I was in seminary, Chuck Kraft, one of my professors, said, “You can live well with sorrow, but you can’t live well with shame.”  Sorrow is about love, and we can live well with it. When we share sorrows together, it divides them. Jesus also shares sorrow with us, so that we can live well. But we can’t live well with shame, and Jesus comes to take that away.

At the end of our lives, when Jesus comes to take us to Heaven, we’ll meet Oo Reh, the young campers who perished in Texas, and everyone else. Until then, God has things for all of us to do, and we pray for forgiveness, for mercy, and for God‘s help to make the world more like God‘s kingdom on Earth as it is in Heaven. We cry, we mourn, we wonder, but God gives us good things to go forward with. Someone asked me, “What does that make you think about God?”

And I said, “Well, my answer is similar to how the disciples answered Jesus: ‘To whom would we go, You have the words of eternal life.'”

Although I don’t understand Oo Reh’s death, like with many other deaths, I cling to Jesus and believe we will all be reunited. Thank you so much for letting us share about Oo Reh. God is with us on this earth, and He takes us to Heaven. I thank God to be on this earth with you all.

Thanks and God bless you,

Dave, family, and the Free Burma Rangers