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Friday, September 2, 2005
Roadside bomb kills two 48th members
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Two members of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade were killed and another was seriously injured in Iraq when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb, U.S. Army officials said Friday.
Ssg. Robert Lee Hollar, 35, of Thomaston and Sgt. George Ray Draughn, 29, of Hiram died in Thursday’s attack. The name of the wounded soldier was not released.
All three were members of Griffin-based Echo Troop, 108th Armor Regiment.
“They were both great guys who gave 100 percent,” said Maj. Larry Deaton, a member of the Griffin-based Echo Troop, 108th Armor Regiment said of Hollar and Draughn. “They volunteered for this mission and served with honor.”
In a separate incident, two members of the 108th were seriously injured by another roadside bomb.
The 108th operates from three austere forward operating bases near Mahmudiyah, a mostly rural area in the so-called “Sunni triangle” south of Baghdad.
Four members of the 108th were killed in August. Sgt. Thomas Strickland, 27, of Douglasville, Spc. Joshua Dingler, 19, of Hiram and Sgt. Paul Saylor, 21, of Bremen, died when their Humvee left a narrow road and rolled into an irrigation canal. Sgt. Michael Stokely, 23, of Loganville, was killed when he stepped on a hidden explosive.
In civilian life, Hollar was a postal worker in Jonesboro. Draughn was a delivery driver for the Coca-Cola Co., said his sister, Charlene Demming, who lived with him in Hiram. Draughn grew up in Shreveport, La., and moved to metro Atlanta in 1999.
He spent eight years in the Guard and had never been deployed overseas before going to Iraq. When his unit was called up, “his first thought was it’s not going to be that bad,” said Demming, who is in the Air Force.
But Demming said her brother was upset recently about the death of a buddy in his unit, Stokely, who was killed Aug. 16.
Draughn was also injured in an IED attack on a vehicle he was riding in 3-4 weeks ago. He sent a text message to his sister’s cellphone saying that it wasn’t a direct hit â€â€? he suffered a concussion and bruising.
She talked to him Wednesday afternoon and he told her he was looking forward to coming home on leave in October.
Demming described her brother as the family clown. “He is the baby of the family and he is the only boy. Basically he was always joking.”
She said Draughn loved to spoil his son, Akeem, a first-grader who lives in Ft. Worth, Texas, and his nieces and nephews.
Draughn is also survived by his parents, George and Lucy, and sister Lessie White, all of Shreveport, and sister Stephanie Barfield of Douglasville.
Draughn will have a full military funeral and will be buried at Lincoln Memorial Cemetery. Heavenly Gates Funeral Home in Shreveport is handling arrangements.
The 4,200-member 48th Brigade left Georgia in May for a year-long combat tour in Iraq. Eighteen of its soldiers have been killed in Iraq, 14 of them by roadside bombs.
As of Friday, at least 1,886 members of the U.S. military have died since the war began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
