As the sun rose Saturday morning in Waimanalo, soldiers from the 25th Infantry Division’s 21st Infantry Regiment competed as squads in a series of challenges in honor of the fallen soldiers before them. Soldiers from Tiger Company ran from the Honolulu Polo Club to Bellows Beach, moving from station to station testing their skills, fitness and ability to work as a team.

The competition was held to mark the anniversary of the death of 1st Lt. Nainoa Hoe, a Hawaii-born soldier of the regiment who was felled by a sniper’s bullet during the 2005 battle for Mosul in Iraq. His brother, Sgt. 1st Class Nakoa Hoe, an Army reservist, joined in the contest, along with a squad of cadets from the University of Hawaii Army ROTC program.

The challenges included toting heavy water jugs, carrying fellow soldiers on stretchers and venturing out into the ocean on a “ruck raft”— Army rucksacks held together around a flotation device — then returning to shore and crawling through the sand before running back to the polo club.

By the end of the competition, the soldiers were covered in sand and drenched in sweat, many of them grinning.

Allen Hoe, father of Nainoa and Nakoa Hoe, spoke to the soldiers upon their return.

“When the 22nd falls on a weekday, we kind of do the regular Army memorial stuff,” he told them. “But you know, today’s a Saturday, and I know Nainoa would be absolutely pissed at his old man if I made you guys get dressed up to do normal Army stuff.”

Nainoa and Nakoa Hoe followed in their father’s footsteps in becoming soldiers. The elder Hoe was drafted at age 19 and became a member of a specialized unit that did reconnaissance deep behind enemy lines in Vietnam. He showed the soldiers a worn American flag that he joked was older than all of them, and said he bought it in Vietnam and carried it in battle.

“So Nainoa and his brother Nakoa grew up knowing the story of this flag because it would sit on my desk and they would ask me about it,” Hoe said.

When Nainoa Hoe went to Iraq, he asked his father to send it with him. He had the flag on him when he died.

Since then the flag has been carried by 25th Infantry Division soldiers on four deployments to Iraq and five deployments to Afghanistan, to carry on the legacy of those who carried it before them.

Hoe said the loss of his son and the way the unit embraced his family has made him reflect on the stakes of military service. “It’s not so much for this flag, our country, and all the good things that this country provides us,” he said. “It is absolutely what you do for the guy on your left and the guy on your right.”

Capt. Michael Kim, commander of Tiger Company, said the competition had special significance for him. In 2017 a close friend of his from high school died in the Afghanistan war. He said the losses of the last two dec­ades of conflict there left a deep and painful mark on a generation of soldiers, but that the memories of fallen comrades help motivate him when he’s struggling.

“They would give anything to be out here with their brothers, with their squad, continuing on to go on a run, even on a Saturday with their friends and their buddies,” Kim said. “I think for some of these younger soldiers, who thankfully haven’t had to experience that, it is harder for them to really tap into something to push themselves further.

“And that’s where I think memorial events like this are really valuable for them, because it helps give them something to latch onto.”

Tiger Company has faced plenty of challenges lately. The unit was tasked to support flushing operations of homes affected by contamination of the Navy’s water supply, which serves 93,000 people in and around Joint Base Pearl Harbor- Hickam, by jet fuel from the Navy’s underground Red Hill fuel storage facility.

Last week the company was out in the field doing live-fire training exercises at Bellows before flying back to Schofield Barracks on helicopters Friday. This week they will continue to work on flushing operations even as they pack up for an upcoming deployment to South Korea.

Kim said reflecting on the fallen is also important to a soldier’s sense of what’s at stake if they are actually called on to fight. The military has heavily scaled back its operations in the Middle East, although they haven’t ended, and about 100 Hawaii National Guardsmen are slated to deploy to the region in 2023.

Today the Pentagon considers the Pacific its top priority as China increasingly asserts itself as a global power and tensions simmer around critical international trade routes.

“The Army’s kind of transitioning to where we’re not deploying regularly like we’re used to, but at the same time, we’re in what they always say is the most consequential theater,” Kim said. “It is so important for us to understand the reality of the profession that we’re in, (but) sometimes it’s hard to really translate that and communicate that to the guys … the theater that we’re aligned with, there’s some actual things that are brewing over there.”

On Saturday afternoon, the 25th Infantry Division held a ceremony at Scho­field Barracks to honor Nainoa Hoe and 11 other fallen soldiers with remarks by division commander Maj. Gen. Joseph Ryan and Allen Hoe. Hoe told attendees that when he came back from Vietnam, he thought he understood war since he had lost dozens of friends and comrades in battle.

“As soldiers, you understand that, you appreciate that, you know what that means,” he said. “But let me tell you, until your son is killed in combat, you don’t have a clue.”