When U.S. Marine Corporal Micah Herndon crawled across the finish line of the 2019 Boston Marathon, he dedicated his run to the three comrades — his close friends Matthew Ballard, Mark D. Juarez and, British journalist Rupert Hamer, who died in 2010 while serving on a mission he led in Afghanistan.
Herndon had wrote their last names on his shoes and on his right hand. He created a hashtag #4ballardhamerjuarez on Facebook in their namesake, and when his Achilles Tendon started bothering him during the race, he repeated their names out loud to himself as he pushed through the pain.