![Freedom isn't free: Lance Cpl Jared M Schmitz, US Marine Corps](https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/07/Jared-Mark-Schmitz.jpg)
Freedom isn't free: Lance Cpl Jared M Schmitz, US Marine Corps
Fox News
Fox News Digital interviewed Gold Star families of service members who lost their lives on August 26, 2021 about what freedom and sacrifice means to them.
Jared Schmitz was killed in action at then-Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 26, 2021, alongside 12 other American service members. He was 20 years old. "People complain about so many things that other people in other countries would love to have and don't have access to." "… he told me that that day when they landed, and he went out on the Abbey Gate for the first time, he thought he was going to die right then and there because it was just a massive sea of people …" Jasmine is a writer at Fox News Digital and a military spouse based in New Orleans. Stories can be sent to jasmine.baehr@fox.com
"People by nature take things for granted all the time, and it never bothered me before. It does personally bother me now when I see people with the freedom they have, and they're wasting it on so many things," Mark Schmitz said in an interview with Fox News Digital.
He hasn't forgotten his son's sacrifice and what that means this Fourth of July weekend.