Army Captain Douglas J. Morrison, who grew up in Framingham, trained the Iraqi army in military maneuvers. He hiked in the mountains of southern Afghanistan, searching for bombs.
His wife, Captain Alissa Morrison, deployed to Afghanistan at the same time, worked with the command staff on civil works projects and outreach to Afghan women.
The military couple — Bronze Star recipients, Ivy League grads, and instructors at the US Military Academy at West Point in New York — will be the guest speakers at Framingham’s Memorial Day ceremony.
“It’s really an honor,” Douglas Morrison, 32, said by phone from West Point. “I’ve never found myself to be a special individual. . . . I kind of view what I do as the highest form of community service that I could possibly do.”
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The ceremony, scheduled for Monday at 11 a.m. on the steps of the Memorial Building on Concord Street downtown, will include posthumous honors for three World War II veterans.
The Bronze Star, Army Commendation, and Medal of Liberty will be presented to Carolyn Sullivan, widow of Private Bernard Sullivan, who was captured and held prisoner by the Germans in 1944.
The Medal of Liberty — presented by the state — will be given to the families of two men killed in action during the war: Sergeant Wilfred W. Mitchell and Second Lieutenant Francis W. Moran, who both served in the Army Air Forces.
Morrison hopes to bring the perspective of a modern soldier, he said.
“We’re an all-volunteer military now,” he said. “We’re a military now where one deployment is not enough. We have several rotations over and over again.”
Morrison, whose parents Peter and Nancy still live in his childhood home, graduated from Framingham High School in 2001. He went to the University of Massachusetts Amherst on an Army ROTC scholarship. As a freshman, he took his oath on the Friday before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
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“That put a whole new spin on things for me,” Morrison said. “If I was ever on the fence about serving, that pushed me right over.”
He was eager to serve, but had to wait until he graduated four years later with an engineering degree.
“It was frustrating waiting, but in the end, engineering has provided me with a really good background for serving,” he said.
He met Alissa when both were assigned to Fort Lewis in Tacoma. The couple, married for eight years, is expecting their first child in October.
In 2013, the Morrisons graduated from Columbia University with master’s degrees in organizational psychology. Both now teach and counsel cadets at West Point.
But Douglas Morrison is looking forward to getting back to combat duty.
“I’m antsy,” he said. “I can’t wait to go back to Afghanistan.”
Morrison has seen comrades die in combat, and led soldiers still recovering from wounds. Their service and sacrifice is never far from his thoughts, he said.
“I do think about, and reflect on it,” he said. “It doesn’t always happen on Memorial Day. My Memorial Day is whenever I want it to be.”
Kathy McCabe can be reached at katherine.mccabe@ globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @GlobeKMcCabe.