Two Down
It may be quiet, but it isn’t over. Two to be buried in Massachusetts this week.
UPDATE: Went down to my town’s central fire station this morning to get my burn permit, saw the flag at half-staff and asked who it was for. The chief said it was for these two young men, also Alex Jimenez of Lawrence, Mass., whose partial remains were recently ID’d and will be buried at Arlington, apart from his original burial in a national cemetary on Long Island. The towns these men came from are roughly 30, 60 and 80 miles away, so I was a little surprised and impressed, and told the chief I was glad he did that.
Lance Cpl. Kevin Preach of Bridgewater died of injuries sustained in an IED attack in Afghanistan.
Like the title character of his favorite “Rocky” movies, 21-year-old Marine Lance Cpl. Kevin T. Preach of Bridgewater was tough and determined, yet self-deprecating and funny, said loved ones and locals.
Brianna Kelliher, 18, Preach’s girlfriend of two years, said he’d wanted to be a Marine since childhood and told her the day they started dating that he planned to enlist.
“He was just so different than anyone I had ever met, and I didn’t want to miss out on being with him,” Kelliher said. “I’ll probably never meet anyone like him ever again.”
…
Preach reportedly lost both legs and a hand and was badly burned. He had been in a medically induced coma at Brooks Army Medical Center in San Antonio.
Kelliher recalled Preach as a true gentleman: He once finished his morning training and flew from Camp Lejuene, N.C., to Bridgewater so he could escort her to her senior prom.
“He jumped through so many hoops but he finally made it to take me to prom,” she said. “He’s the most unselfish person I have ever met.”
Army PFC Jonathan Roberge of Leominster was among four killed by a suicide bomber in Mosul.
A 22-year-old Leominster soldier was one of four U.S. servicemen killed when a suicide car bomb exploded Monday in Mosul, the deadliest attack in Iraq in nine months, family and military officials said.
Jonathan Roberge was a 2005 graduate of Leominster High School’s Center for Technical Education described as a “great kid” by school principal Thomas Browne. He deployed to Iraq with the Army for his first tour in December, Browne said.
“He was committed to any project he worked on,” Browne said. “And he worked on it independently.”
Browne said during school, Roberge managed a full load of classwork and a job at a car dealership to hone his mechanical skills.
Roberge, three soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter were on patrol near a police check point in the volatile Sunni area Monday when the car bomber struck, military officials said, killing all five.
Military officials consider Mosul one of the few, if not the last, remaining strongholds of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Monday’s attack was the deadliest since four Marines were killed May 2, 2008 in combat near the Anbar province, west of Baghdad.
Browne said Roberge comes from a highly respected family. His mother works as an assistant at the school and his father is a Leominster High graduate, president of the band boosters and adviser to the technical school’s carpentry council.
“This is a family that really represents everything that’s great about LHS,” Browne said.
Topics: Afghanistan, Iraq
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 6:36 am Comments (3) on Tuesday, February 17, 2009
3 Responses to “Two Down”
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February 17th, 2009 at 9:19 am
They’re everything that’s great about the USA. God bless the families.
February 17th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Taps is a beautiful song for a loyal, and quiet, heart.
Semper Fidelis.
February 17th, 2009 at 10:18 pm
God bless them all.