Thursday marks ten years since U.S. Army Cpl. Frank Robert Gross was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

“Twenty one days after he was deployed, we got the knock on our door that our son had been killed in action,” said Craig Gross, Cpl. Gross’ father.

Gross remembers that day like it was yesterday. Frankie, as he calls him, was deployed in Afghanistan when, the vehicle he was riding in was hit by an improvised explosive device.

Frankie was killed instantly.

“I prayed for my son every day, and I know in my heart of hearts that Frankie is now more alive than we are. He’s in a happy place,” Gross said.

A happy place, quite the opposite of what’s now happening in Afghanistan, where years of work and sacrifice by the U.S. military rapidly unraveled.

“We really believe that it probably could have been done with a little bit better planning,” Gross said.

Frankie, along with more than 2,400 other US service members, lost their lives trying to prevent exactly what’s currently unfolding — the Taliban regaining power over the country.

But Gross says he still believes in his son’s sacrifice.

“People have asked me, do you believe that your son’s sacrifice was in vain? And my response to that is ‘absolutely not,’”

But no matter what happens, people like Cpl. Frank Robert Gross will forever be American heroes.

“We believe that nobody can take away the hero status that our sons and our daughters earned by serving their country in an honorable fashion,” his father said.