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Sunday, July 31, 2005
Four more from 48th killed in Iraq
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Striker, Iraq - Less than a week after four soldiers from the Georgia Army National Guard were killed in a roadside bomb attack, military officials said four more died late Saturday in a similar incident.
Members of the 48th Brigade Combat Team were shaken by the news Sunday. Some soldiers at Camp Striker trembled with emotion, while others spoke only in whispers or withdrew from their comrades to be alone.
Just Thursday, they had held a memorial service for the soldiers who were killed on patrol July 24. In Georgia, while the families of those men were still planning for funeral services later this week, a fresh wave of fear and grief spread through the network of Guard families as word of the new deaths started to get out.
Second Lt. Selena Owens, spokeswoman for the 48th Brigade, said the four latest casualties occurred when a roadside bomb exploded near their Humvee during a patrol.
“The brigade is in mourning,” Owens said Sunday.
Owens said she could not disclose any more information until all the families had been notified, in accordance with Army policy.
A U.S. military statement said the four were killed at about 11 p.m. Saturday in southwestern Baghdad, the area where the 48th operates.
Although some regular military units have seen larger single-day death tolls in combat operations, few National Guard brigades have seen so many soldiers die so early in their deployment. Georgia’s citizen soldiers left their civilian jobs and families in January to begin training and arrived in Iraq in early June for a year’s deployment.
The worst single incident involving National Guard soldiers occurred in January, when six members of the Louisiana Army National Guard were killed by a roadside bomb that destroyed their Bradley Fighting Vehicle in Baghdad.
Georgia’s 48th Brigade, which has about 4,400 soldiers, accounts for about 3 percent of the U.S. forces currently in Iraq. After the latest casualties, however, the brigade had the sad distinction of accounting for 16 percent of the U.S. deaths there in July, according to an analysis of data compiled by the independent Web site icasualty.org.
On July 24, a roadside bomb killed the first Georgia National Guard soldiers to die in combat since World War II. They were: Staff Sgt. Carl Fuller, 44, of Covington; Sgt. James Kinlow, 35, of Thomson; Sgt. John Thomas, 33, of Valdosta; and Spc. Jacques “Gus” Brunson, 30, of Sylvester. All were members of Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment.
The 48th has now lost nine soldiers since arriving in Iraq less than two months ago. Another soldier from the 48th died in a vehicle accident in Kuwait in May.
At least 1,794 members of the U.S. military have died since the Iraq war began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
— Staff researcher Alice Wertheim contributed to this article. â€â€? Moni Basu reported from Camp Striker, Iraq, Anna Varela from Atlanta.
