Petty Officer Third Class Fernando Mendez-Aceves loved to take care of people. As the third of four sons, he was fiercely protective of his younger brother, Kenneth. His baby brother was his pastime. They were always together. That nurturing attitude carried over to his service with a medical unit. He grew up in a family that moved around the globe, including countries in Africa and Southeast Asia, before settling in Puerto Rico. He wanted to enter college and become a physician. More recently, however, he aspired to become a Navy SEAL. The day he left for Iraq, they took pictures one after another of him in his fatigues, cap shading his eyes from the sunlight, with medic's insignia pinned to his collar. To the mother of Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Fernando Mendez-Aceves, the pictures capture the way things used to be: her beaming with pride, head leaning on his right shoulder, his younger brother at his left shoulder, Fernando's muscular arms encircling them both. Friends teased him, but Fernando was never embarrassed to show his devotion to his family. He knew the importance of family from his birth. He was the third boy his mother had in as many years, for years the youngest member of a home shared by four generations. Fernando was smaller than his brothers, a gentle boy who brought home wounded birds. He was always extremely sensitive. His heart was always hurting for someone. When she slept, he would line his GI Joe dolls alongside her bed. He was 11 when Kenneth was born. Jealous at first, Fernando soon fell in love with his younger brother, helping to change his diapers, playing with him, caring for him to allow a rest for his mother, who had malaria. Fernando became a U.S. citizen, but he embraced his Mexican heritage, wearing a custom-tailored Charro suit to graduate from high school in Ponce, Puerto Rico. Another family tradition was respect for military service, instilled in the boys since infancy, when their great-grandmother would rock them to sleep humming soldier's marches. No one was surprised when Fernando's older brother Enrique joined the Air Force. A year later, at 21, Fernando signed up for the Navy, choosing a career as a combat medic. He'd been a scrawny kid. Boot camp changed that. Fernando outran everyone, won top marks on every fitness test. His biceps grew so thick he needed to wear oversize shirts. He began training as a Navy SEAL, but was forced to quit after suffering from hypothermia. When Fernando was assigned to Southern California, he brought his mother and Kenneth along and rented a small apartment for the three of them. He took Kenneth everywhere. Girlfriends used to joke that his younger brother came along as a chaperone. He lifted weights at work, then again in the afternoon with his brother. They hung a pull-up bar in the bathroom. At the Naval Medical Center in San Diego, friends nicknamed him for his bulk, calling him Rocky, the Muscle Man or simply Hulk. His job was preparing troops for Iraq, but he volunteered to go himself, not wanting to waste his combat training. A candle burns continuously on the memorial altar they've built, where Fernando watches over them from a half-dozen photographs. There's a bottle of Corona, his favorite beer; a not-quite-complete deck of playing cards; a last letter from a female friend, still sealed because Fernando never had the chance to open it. Inside a plain navy blue sack is the box that contains Fernando's remains. He was 27.

Naval Medical Center San Diego,
1st Marine Division Detachment,
San Diego