From our staff and news services
U.S. troops who have died recently in Iraq and Kuwait:
19-year-old from Conyers had been active at Salem High
Fresh out of Rockdale County's Salem High School, Diego F. Rincon couldn't wait to enlist in the military. He was out to avenge the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Rincon is the second person with Conyers ties to die in the 11 days of the Iraq war. On Saturday, the 19-year-old gymnast, musician and former cheerleader was among the four soldiers killed in Iraq when a motorist detonated a car bomb at a military checkpoint near Najaf. The four were members of the 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized) from Fort Stewart. The motorist appeared to indicate he needed help and waved the soldiers to come to his vehicle. That Rincon would have gone to help the car's driver didn't surprise Leslie Montemayor, whose daughter Catherine was dating Rincon. "He was doing what Diego would have done when summoned to help. He would have helped and that's how he died, and I think Catherine takes comfort in that," said Montemayor. The terrorist attacks on New York and Washington were pivotal in Rincon's decision to enlist in the military. "I think he signed up for the longest term he could," said Montemayor. "He said he wanted to go over there and kick [butt]." Rincon was a 2001 graduate of Salem High School. Friends remembered him as a high-spirited person who was active in cheerleading, gymnastics and drama. He had performed in the drama department's spring musical, "Grease."
Josh Kinnebrew, a University of Georgia student and Salem High graduate, cheered on the same squad for the Seminoles football team and worked with Rincon at Rockdale Gymnastics, helping younger students learn tumbling and gymnastic skills. Kinnebrew said he, Rincon and another cheerleader called themselves "The Three Amigos" because they spent so much time together. While some join the Army to earn money for college, Kinnebrew said, Rincon "went because he was proud, and I honestly think he just really wanted to be there." The Rincon family came to the United States from Colombia in 1989 to escape the drug-fueled violence there. Catherine Montemayor posted a message to Rincon on ajc.com on March 17. It said: "Hey Baby! I just wanted to let you know I love you and I miss you. Be strong over there because I'm waiting for you to come back! I promise I'll be waiting as long as it takes. Everyone is waiting for you. I can't imagine what you are going through. You are so brave for fighting for your country. You really are my hero! I'm really proud of you! Love Always."
Metro area loses one of its own
A 1998 graduate of DeKalb's Lakeside High School was identified Wednesday as the first metro Atlanta serviceman killed on the battlefield in Iraq. Spc. Jamaal Addison, 22, of Roswell was listed by the Army as one of two soldiers from the 507th Maintenance Company killed Sunday. Now there are three. He was the second battlefield casualty with Georgia ties. On Monday, Spc. Gregory P. Sanders, 19, of Hobart, Ind., was killed by sniper fire as his tank unit moved toward Baghdad. He was a member of the 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized) from Fort Stewart in Hinesville. Addison's company, from Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, was ambushed near Nasiriyah, 230 miles south of Baghdad. Also killed was Pfc. Howard Johnson, 21, of Mobile. Eight other members of the 507th are missing and five are Iraqi prisoners, the Pentagon said. Some prisoners of war shown Sunday in an Iraqi television video identified themselves as serving with the 507th. The video also showed four bodies that Iraqi television said were Americans from the attack on the 507th. The Army did not make clear whether Addison was killed during the ambush or whether he might have been one of the bodies shown on Iraqi television. Kevin Addison of Decatur, Jamaal's father, said he had been notified by military authorities of his son's death. He declined to say more. Sharon Addison, who is not Jamaal's mother but was married to Kevin Addison for eight years and helped raise his son, said the young man was a joy. "He had a very gentle spirit. He grew up in the church. He always looked out for his [two] sisters. Jamaal was one of the sweetest young men I've known," she said. Sharon Addison's son, Rodney Fisher, said Jamaal Addison was one of the best people he had ever known. "That man was like blood to me," Fisher said from his home in New York. "He was a good person. I liked his aura about him. God, I can't believe this." Addison attended Henderson High School from eighth to 10th grade, then went to Lakeside, where he was a member of the Junior ROTC and graduated with a college prep degree, said schools spokeswoman Mary Stimmel. Wednesday in Hinesville, one of the soldiers who helped train Gregory Sanders remembered when he arrived at the Army installation near Savannah in November 2001. "He came to us brand-new," Staff Sgt. Stephen Feldhaus said Wednesday in an interview on the post. "I actually trained him and had him on my tank and chewed his butt when he was a young soldier. "It hit me pretty hard," said Feldhaus, who now works in recruiting. "He was a good kid. At Christmas, I played Santa Claus and held his little girl on my lap." Sanders' relatives, including his wife, RuthAnn, and 14-month-old daughter, Gwendolyn, were in his hometown of Hobart, Ind., when they got news of his death. Feldhaus speculated that Sanders, an armor crewman on an M-1A1 tank, was loading ammunition when he was shot in the head during a sniper ambush. Five other soldiers were wounded. "He could have either been driving the tank or loading, but the driver sits inside the tank with the hatch down," Feldhaus said. "The loader and tank commander are the most exposed, up out of the hatch looking around." Feldhaus said he and other soldiers nicknamed Sanders "Turtle" because of his haircut. "He shaved his head bald all the time to save money going to the barber," said Feldhaus. Sanders was among about 13,300 soldiers with the 3rd Division who have been deployed from Fort Stewart. Gone is Army Capt. Christopher Scott Seifert, 27, the U.S. intelligence officer killed Sunday in a grenade attack in Kuwait, allegedly by a fellow soldier. It is a fate no one in Seifert's large community of friends, teachers, fellow Moravian Church members and neighbors could have contemplated for a young man so committed to his country and fellow soldiers. "To think that a fellow comrade could have done this to a man with such a penchant to serve his country," Wolfenden said, his voice catching. "It's really hard." Seifert, an only child from the rural outskirts of Easton, Pa., is being mourned like a brother by friends from almost every stage of his life. "Moravian College is proud to have such an alumnus," said Ervin Rokke, president of the historic Bethlehem, Pa.-based college where Seifert was an honors history student, dormitory resident adviser, fraternity leader and Special Olympics volunteer who married the student government president, Terri Flowers. "We were very proud to have him as a Big Brother," said Maryjean deSandes, executive director of the Lehigh Valley's Big Brothers and Big Sisters of America. It named Seifert its College Big Brother of the Year in 1996 for his work with a boy named David, whom he mentored from age 10 through 12. "Most college students stayed with us only a year, but Chris was unique," deSandes said. "He stayed for three years. He never missed a Wednesday with David." DeSandes declined to identify David except to say he was failing some subjects when he was matched with Seifert but was an A student when Seifert graduated. It was David who nominated him for big brother of the year, she said. The pastors of Central Moravian Church similarly mourned "this honorable young man," who, with his parents, was a lifelong member. He most recently worshiped there on Christmas Eve. A neighbor, Helen Ritter, 71, recalled how Seifert, as a little boy, once went all over their wooded neighborhood looking for her lost dog, Penny (he found him). As a soldier overseas, he found a chocolate candy in Germany called Ritter and brought home a box for her and her husband on every visit. Helen and Thomas Seifert were worried about their son's desire to become a soldier, Wolfenden recalled. "They knew the inherent dangers," he recalled. "But Chris was committed, and they were excellent. They supported him 100 percent." The serious soldier was known for an unfailing sense of humor. At his ROTC senior prom, classmates chose quotations from Norman Schwarzkopf, Benjamin Franklin and the Bible to accompany their names in a program. Seifert chose one from Dr. Seuss: "A WASN'T has no fun at all. No he doesn't. A WASN'T just isn't. He just isn't present. But you -- you are YOU! And now, isn't that pleasant?" Seifert started off as an infantry officer and then was trained in military intelligence, charged with understanding the enemy and briefing the infantry brigade on enemy capabilities. He had served in Europe and Saudi Arabia, and was stationed at Fort Campbell, Ky., with the 101st Airborne when he deployed to the Persian Gulf region. He and his wife had their first child, Benjamin, four months ago. An orphan who grew up on the streets while Guatemala was enmeshed in civil war, he found a new family when at age 14 he traveled to the United States by train, foot and bus. He enlisted partly to thank the United States for his new life, his foster brother said. "He joined the Marines to pay back a little of what he'd gotten from the U.S.," Max Mosquera said. "For him it was a question of honor." Lance Cpl. Gutierrez, 22, was killed in ground combat Friday. On Monday, a flag hung outside the Mosqueras' home in Lomita, 25 miles south of Los Angeles. The front porch was lined with pots of geraniums, each with a flag and a sign that read "United We Stand." His foster mother, Nora Mosquera, 56, displayed Gutierrez's school and Marine certificates as she wavered between tears and happy memories. Gutierrez never forgot the sister he left behind in Guatemala and always hoped to bring her to the United States, she said. On April 2, the acting director of the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services signed papers granting Gutierrez posthumous American citizenship. In the last letter his foster mother received from Gutierrez more than a week ago, he described his life in a desert camp. "Mama, there is so much sand here. I clean out my tent and 15 minutes later I've got to clean it again," he wrote. "Even in the food there is sand." He added, "Please pray for all of us."
A posthumous promotion for Marine chopper pilot
Her terrible feeling soon proved accurate. Chamberlain's son, Capt. Jay T. Aubin, 36, a Marine Corps pilot and platoon captain, may have been at the controls of the doomed helicopter.
Jay Thomas Aubin was born to fly, his relatives said. The oldest of 3 boys and 38 grandchildren, he was reared in the central Maine town of Skowhegan, where he was remembered as a deep-dimpled straight arrow who neither drank nor smoked, and who seemed to pursue a pilot's career from birth. His father, Thomas Aubin, spent his off hours dealing in, and flying, planes. By the time his first son was 2, Mr. Aubin would strap him into the seat beside him as he carried forestry workers to remote locations.
By the age of 4 or 5, Mr. Aubin said ruefully -- and lovingly -- of his son Jay, the boy would sit around and tell tire-kickers all the flaws of the planes they were looking over.
"He knew about as much about planes as any guy many times his age, "Mr. Aubin, who now lives in central Texas, told The North County Times of San Diego.
Jay Aubin was a wrestler at Skowhegan Area High School, and wanted to go to college after graduating in 1984, but did not have the money. He enlisted in the Marines at 18 and served four years, working as a helicopter mechanic but dreaming of becoming a pilot. He met his wife, Rhonda, on the aircraft carrier Ranger. Both left the Corps, returned to Maine and had two children, Alicia, 10, and Nathan, 7. He was a doting father, relatives and friends said.
In Maine, Aubin went back to college, picking up an associate's degree in machine tooling and a bachelor's in business management, as well as his airframe and power-plant maintenance license, relatives said. Then he re-enlisted.
This time the Marines made him an officer -- and an instructor pilot. He was deployed overseas several times, relatives said, and was in Okinawa when the Corps told him he had been selected to become a pilot of Marine One, the presidential helicopter. He would first have to finish his three-year instructor's assignment at Marine Air Station Yuma.
When Aubin was sent to the Persian Gulf six weeks ago, relatives said, he told his mother not to worry about him. He was scheduled to be promoted to major upon returning home. Instead, he was promoted posthumously by President Bush.
At home in St. Anne, Ill., Beaupre's father, Mark, a federal grain inspector, was having a restless night's sleep. Shortly after 3 a.m. Friday, he told friends, he heard a car pull up outside. His worst nightmare was real: Three Marines were on his doorstep. Ryan Anthony Beaupre was the pride of St. Anne, a farming town of 1,300 people 60 miles south of Chicago -- a redheaded Opie in the eyes of the many who knew him. Nearly the whole town turned out for a memorial service on Friday. "Ryan was the kind of kid -- kind of man -- you hope your son becomes, you hope your daughter marries," a family friend, Pat Gould, wrote in an e-mail message on Saturday. "His bright red hair and big grin and 'Hi, Aunt Pat! How're you doin'?' could make you feel like the coolest person in the world in that moment." A track and cross-country star at Bishop McNamara High School in Kankakee, Ill., he headed for Illinois Wesleyan University in 1991 on a partial track scholarship. He took a job at State Farm Insurance in Bloomington, Ill., but quickly grew bored and joined the Marines. He got his aviator's wings in 1999. Last summer, when his unit passed through a nearby airport, Beaupre flew his helicopter low over St. Anne. Alyse Beaupre, 31, said her brother lived in Encinitas, Calif., near Camp Pendleton overlooking the Pacific. He surfed nearly every day. He was to have been his brother Christopher's best man this November. "We used to say he was married to the Marines and having an affair with his surfboard," Ms. Beaupre said. He shipped out to the gulf in February and, rather than call home, gave his telephone time to comrades with wives or children. He wrote letters home instead. He told his brother Christopher the deployment to the Persian Gulf was "like a big camping trip." On Saturday, two days after he died, his cousin Anne Nicholson, 36, of St. Anne received a letter dated March 3. "My family had sent him a card a few weeks ago," Nicholson said outside church on Sunday. "We didn't expect him to respond because we knew he was so busy. But then yesterday, we got a letter from him. He said, 'You guys take care and I'll do the same over here.' "
Baltimore resident's death hits family hard
Waters-Bey was raised among the row houses of northeast Baltimore, where he attended Harbor City High School and graduated from Northern High. At school, he excelled at swimming and track; at home, he excelled as a cutup, doing anything for a laugh. "He was always making faces, making people laugh," his sister Michelle Waters, 28, told The Associated Press. He loved to fish, relatives said. "And he loved to barbecue -- ribs, especially." His ex-wife, Towanda Poteat, was pregnant when he decided to join the Marine Corps to become a better provider, according to his father, Michael Waters-Bey, 48. His son, Kenneth, 10, lives in Baltimore with his mother. But last Thanksgiving, Waters-Bey left Baltimore with Kenneth in tow, taking the boy to live with him and his new wife, Belinda, a Navy servicewoman, at their home in San Diego. Father and son went to a gun range, toured Camp Pendleton and played ball together. But their newfound closeness was short-lived: Waters-Bey sent Kenneth back to Baltimore when he received his deployment orders in February. The boy's mother told reporters that the day before her ex-husband died, she was talking more about him than usual with her son. She had agreed to buy him a computer so he could e-mail his father in the desert. Waters-Bey's death hit his family hard. The elder Waters-Bey spoke bitterly of his son's loss. He said he had last spoken to his son on March 13. "President Bush, you took my only son away from me," he told reporters, clutching a photograph of him. The sergeant's mother, Angela Waters-Bey, wandered the neighborhood distraught on Friday. "I'm feeling sad now because my father is gone and I won't see him again," Kenneth, a fifth grader, told The Baltimore Sun. Brian Matthew Kennedy, 25, grew up in Glenview, Ill., a suburb north of Chicago. As a boy he donned camouflage and played soldier in his backyard, "sneaking around like we were in battle zones," a childhood friend, Steve Barg, told The Chicago Tribune. His fashion sense stuck: At Glenbrook South High School, his trademark outfit was camouflage pants and a football jersey. He ran track and was a starting offensive guard on the football team. He graduated with honors in 1995, then played lacrosse at Purdue University and at Texas Tech. He studied mechanical engineering, but quit to join the Marines in 1999. The Marines made him a helicopter hydraulics mechanic, and his relatives said he was the crew chief on the Sea Knight that crashed. He deployed to the Persian Gulf in early February, they said. Along the Maine coast in St. George, his mother, Melissa Derbyshire, recalled Kennedy as an avid rock climber, sailor, lobster and mussel eater, and stargazer. She said that when she talked to her son about the war before he left for the gulf, "He spoke about the flag on the casket and said that he would do his best to come home again." She said he believed in the afterlife. A friend, Alexis Johnson, remembered Kennedy in his dress uniform, dancing for seven straight hours at her 1999 wedding. "He was like a magnet," she said. "All these girls were swooning around him, but he didn't even know it." His father remembered Kennedy raising $2,500 for a friend hurt in boating accident, and buying weekly meals for a homeless man. Kennedy said his son called from Kuwait on Wednesday night. "He felt he was fulfilling a wonderful mission," he said. "We just miss him terribly already. He was a wonderful man."
Main casualties page
Capt. Seifert
Cpl. Gutierrez
In Winslow, Maine, it was still Thursday night, and Nancy Chamberlain was watching television. When she learned that a CH-46E Sea Knight helicopter had gone down, she told reporters later, she immediately had a sense of foreboding. "We just knew," she said.
Capt. Aubin
Capt. Beaupre
Sgt. Kendall Damon Waters-Bey, 29, was the crew chief of the Marine Sea Knight helicopter that crashed in the opening day of the war, relatives said. His father learned of his death at 3 a.m. Friday in Baltimore.
Sgt. Waters-Bey
Cpl. Brian Kennedy's father, Mark Kennedy, received the knock on the door at 1:28 a.m. Friday at his home in Houston, learning his son died in a helicopter crash near the Iraqi border.
Cpl. Kennedy
Second Lt. Therrel S. Childers, 30, of Saucier, Miss., was fatally shot in the stomach on Friday while leading his infantry platoon against an oil pumping station in a sweep toward the Rumaila oil field, which had been set afire.
Lt. Childers
Childers was born in West Virginia and grew up near Gulfport, Miss. Marines
He was a hiker, a mountain climber and a triathlete. In 1999, he ran in a 5-miles Run for Peace in Charlotte, N.C.
As a marine, Childers lived an itinerant life often fraught with risk. He fought in the first Persian Gulf War. He was a security guard at the American embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, leaving shortly before the 1998 bombings. A neighbor said he was preparing for a transfer to Guam when he received his orders to the Persian Gulf in February.
Childers' parents, Joseph and Judy, of Powell, Wyo., were visiting their daughter, Sandy Brown, in Killeen, Texas, on Friday when Marines came to break the news. Brown, 32, was waiting to see off her husband, Richard Brown, a sergeant in the Army's 4th Infantry Division, who is to leave Fort Hood for the Gulf any day now.
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 Lt. Adams |
His parents, who were in Germany visiting his younger sister, Cari, who is attending the University of Heidelberg, learned of their son's death after two Navy chaplains came calling at their home in La Mesa, Calif., at 6:15 a.m. Pacific time. Their neighbors Pete and Dianne Micklish reached the Adamses by telephone.
Thomas Mullen Adams, a direct descendant of President John Adams, was reared in a prominent La Mesa family and soon showed the public-spiritedness for which his ancestors were renowned. He graduated from Grossmont High School in 1993 and from the Naval Academy in 1997. He received flight training in Pensacola, Fla., was promoted to lieutenant in 2000 and served in Japan and Virginia, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported. He won two National Defense Service Medals, three Sea Service Deployment Ribbons and other decorations and awards.
"He's one of these amazingly clean-cut, all-American kids," his aunt, Elizabeth Hansen, told The Union-Tribune. "He's the kind of kid that if you had a very special daughter, you would hope that she could snag him. He was just amazingly bright, funny and kind."
In October he was assigned as exchange officer with the Royal Navy's 849 Squadron, now embarked on the aircraft carrier Ark Royal. The assignment was a boon for Adams, a soccer fanatic who had volunteered to go to Japan with the carrier Kitty Hawk in time for the World Cup finals there last summer. He joined a local team near his base in Helston, England. There were other benefits to bunking with the British: their ships have pubs, and he was allowed weekly 20-minute phone calls home.
SOLDIERS KILLED FROM CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C.
Sgt. Michael E. Bitz
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 Sgt. Bitz |
Bitz, 31, was a father of four especially eager to see his youngest children, twins born a month after he was sent overseas. He was killed in action March 23 near An Nasiriyah, Iraq.
The 31-year-old from Ventura, Calif., was assigned to the 2nd Assault Amphibious Battalion, 2nd Marine Division.
Bitz joined the Marines in 1995 at the urging of his mother, who said her son drifted from job to job after graduating from Hueneme High School.
"He loved the service. He found direction and purpose in his life," Donna Bellman said.
His wife, Janina, gave birth to twins last month, weeks after her husband received his orders. He had two other children, ages 2 and 7.
"I had this terrible feeling since he shipped out in January," Bellman said. "I kept trying to picture a white bubble around him to keep him safe. But it didn't work."
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 Cpl. Buesing |
Some students at Cedar Key School went home early after hearing the Buesing, a 2000 graduate, was killed in combat March 23 near An Nasiriyah.
Buesing, 20, of Cedar Key, Fla., was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade.
"He was full of energy in life, he always had a smile on his face," said Angie Doty, 42, who works in the guidance office at Cedar Key School.
Buesing's eighth-grade sister still attends the 300-student, K-12 school about 100 miles north of St. Petersburg, Doty said.
"We are just completely devastated," said Sandra Cunch, his grandmother. "He was the love of our lives."
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 Lance Cpl. Fribley |
Fribley had been working as a recreation coordinator at a retirement complex when anger over the Sept. 11 attacks helped inspire him to join the Marines, his father said.
Fribley, 26, of Fort Myers, Fla., was killed in action March 23 near An Nasiriyah. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade.
Raised in northern Indiana, Fribley was a top high school athlete and an Indiana State University graduate, his father said.
Garry Fribley, of Atwood, Ind., said he and his son had talked about the possibility of such an attack.
"That's part of war. People better wake up. There are no rules in war. ... It's time to take the gloves off," he said. "We're so intent on being the nice guys, and they (Iraqi soldiers) are not going to abide by anything."
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 Cpl. Garibay |
Garibay planned to be a police officer when his Marine enlistment was completed next year.
Garibay, 21, of Costa Mesa, Calif., was killed in action March 23 near An Nasiriyah. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade.
A native of Jalisco, Mexico, Garibay and his family moved to the United States when he was a baby. He joined the Marines three years ago.
On April 2, the acting director of the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services signed papers granting Garibay posthumous American citizenship.
Garibay wrote to his mother often and sent money home almost every month, family members said. In his last letter, he asked for a package of his favorite Mexican candies and a CD of popular ranchera singer Vicente Fernandez.
"It's such a deep pain I am feeling," his mother, Simona Garibay said in Spanish. "Nobody can imagine what a mother suffers."
Cpl. Jorge A. Gonzalez, Los Angeles
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 Cpl. Jorge Gonzalez |
Jorge A. Gonzalez became a dad for the first time on March 4. He learned about the birth of his son, Alonso, just days before he was killed in combat March 23.
The family last saw Gonzalez and his wife at Christmas and were surprised to see that she was pregnant.
"It was really beautiful," said his father, Mario Gonzalez. "It's a memory I will hold on to."
Gonzalez, 20, from Los Angeles and stationed at Camp Lejeune, loved soccer and wanted to use his military experience to help him become a police officer.
"He understood the sacrifice," his father said.
In his last letter home, Gonzalez told his family not to worry.
"If you can wait a little longer," he wrote, "we'll see each other in summer. God willing."
His mother, Rosa Gonzalez, called the letter a "gift."
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 Sgt. Hodson |
"You could tell that uniform meant a lot to him," said James Horton, who coached Hodson in basketball at Smithville High School, in Smithville, Mo., "I know that made him happy."
On Monday, Hodson was one of three American servicemen that the Department of Defense identified as having died in accidents in recent days while serving in Iraq.
Hodson and another soldier, Brandon S. Tobler, a 19-year-old Army Reserve specialist, died in separate vehicle accidents, the department said.
Hodson, 22, was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade based at Camp Lejeune, N.C. He graduated from high school in Smithville, a suburb of Kansas City, in 1999. He had moved there three years earlier with his twin sister and mother.
"He was one of those kids everyone liked," said Horton. "He always tried his hardest to do the best job for the team."
After joining the Marine Corps, Hodson came back to visit the high school two or three times a year. Horton said his former student sometimes asked him to open up the school gym on Sunday evenings so he and his former teammates could get in a game or two.
The sergeant, 6 feet 2 inches tall and always a good athlete, had dropped some weight as a Marine and looked "like a marathoner," Horton said.
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 Cpl. Orlowski |
Orlowski was assigned to the 2nd Tank Battalion of the 2nd Marine Division based at Camp Lejeune.
He joined the reserves three years ago, said Nicole Kross, his former girlfriend.
"He wanted to be a Marine from since he was 10 years old," Kross said in an interview at the house in south Buffalo, N.Y., she and Orlowski had once shared. "He was really proud of himself -- it was something he always wanted to do and he did it."
Orlowski was called up for active duty on Jan. 19, and went to Camp Lejeune and then on to Kuwait. He called his mother at 4:30 Saturday morning, Kross said, about 10 hours before his death.
He spoke to his sister, his mother and his 3-year-old daughter, Cameryn Lee. Kross is her mother.
"He talked to Cameryn and told her he loved her," Kross said. "His mother told me he said, 'We're going in there and everything's OK.' Ten hours later, the Marines showed up at his mother's door."
Kross said she had struggled to explain Orlowski's death to their child, who is too young to fully understand it. Kross took her daughter to the cemetery where her own mother, who died when Kross was 10, is buried.
"I took her to her grandmother's grave," Kross said. "I said, 'Grandma's watching over us, and now her daddy is, too.' She said, 'Daddy died?' I said, 'Yes.' And she said, 'Don't worry, Mommy, he's going to go to the hospital and he'll be OK."'
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 Staff Sgt. Jordan with his son Tyler, in 2002. |
Jordan was in Iraq a decade ago in Operation Desert Storm, so he thought he knew what to expect, his wife said.
But there was no way Jordan could have expected that a group of Iraqis would pretend to surrender, then ambush his unit, Amanda Jordan said.
"My husband was the most prepared Marine there is, but you can't be prepared for the unknown," she said. "They're saying he was killed in action, but for me it's really murder."
Jordan, 42, was killed Sunday near An Nasiriyah. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade.
Jordan, originally from the Houston area, joined the Marines 15 years ago, his wife said.
Amanda Jordan said she met her husband while he was moonlighting as a bouncer at a bar. They dated only a few weeks before they went to Las Vegas and got married in a little chapel.
"We tried to even go through that drive-through chapel, but the line of cars was so long we didn't want to wait," she said.
Jordan lived in Enfield, Conn., with his wife and their 6-year-old son, Tyler. He sent his son many letters, one of which included a map of the world for the boy to track his father's trip.
When Tyler was told what happened, he immediately put on his favorite green camouflage shirt, and has not wanted to change clothes or eat since, his mother said.
2nd Lt. Frederick E. Pokorney Jr.
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 Lt. Porkorney |
Pokorney was a "wonderful all-around kid" who became a devoted family man and dedicated Marine, friends said.
Pokorney, 31, of Tonopah, Nev., was killed March 23 near An Nasiriyah. He was assigned to the Headquarters Battery, 1st Battalion, 10th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade.
"He was someone you'd be proud to call your son," said Janet Dwyer, secretary at Tonopah High School.
Pokorney played on the varsity basketball and football teams at school, in a small mining town 220 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The basketball team made the state finals both years the 6-foot-5 center played.
Pokorney attended Oregon State University in Corvallis, where a former neighbor said he was a "wonderful dad and husband" who cut an impressive figure.
"I had to look up at him, he was way over 6 feet," Dave Sodeman said. "I wouldn't want him on the wrong side of me."
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 Cpl. Rosacker |
Rosacker, 21, was killed in action March 23 near An Nasiriyah. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade.
His father, Navy Command Master Chief Rod Rosacker, returned home Monday after several months away. One of his two daughters told him two Marines and a chaplain were at the door.
"He just wanted to do something for his country and that's what he did," Rosacker said. "He was doing what he wanted to."
Rosacker joined the Marines when he was 18, despite scholarship offers to play college football. Rod Rosacker and his wife, Debra, recalled letters written on used food containers sent by their son from the Middle East.
In the letters, he said how he missed them and complained of sandstorms. His parents mailed him some boxes Monday, with letters, candy and some bandanas for protection against blowing sand.
At Rosacker's home in the hills of San Diego, his wife grew teary-eyed as she declined a reporter's request to speak about her husband.
"I don't want to say anything right now," the young woman said, declining to give her name. "It's just too crazy."
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 Cpl. Slocum |
Thomas Slocum was a troubled teenager until the Marines turned his life around.
"He was gung-ho," said Slocum's stepfather, Stanley Cooper. "Once he got in the Marines, he was in it all the way. He didn't do anything halfway."
Slocum, 22, of Thornton, Colo., and based at Camp Lejeune, died March 23 in combat.
"He's a hero," said an uncle, Steve Slocum. "I believe in the flag, and this country was built on people just like him."
A Navy veteran, Cooper had suggested his stepson join the military. Slocum hadn't been a good student before signing up while still attending high school, but afterward his grades improved so much he made the honor roll before graduating in 1998, Cooper said.
He wore his uniform to the wedding of his mother, Terry, and Cooper in 1998.
"It must have been 90 degrees at the wedding," said another uncle, Jim Slocum. "I took off my coat and tie, but you couldn't get him to take his dress blues off."
