Fairview Marine Killed in Fallujah Attack

[Southpaw Bookworm]

And for what?

*Note that I'm posting the whole article because there's no way to link directly to an article in the Times West Virginian. But I've worked there and I seriously doubt that copyright issues are even on their radar.*

FAIRVIEW — Marine Lance Corporal John T. “ Tommy” Byrd II had a premonition that he wasn’t going to make it home from Iraq.
Byrd, 23, of Fairview, was one of eight Marines killed in a car bomb attack on a truck outside Fallujah on Saturday, defense officials said.
“ He woke us up in the middle of the night this summer with a telephone call,” Nan Byrd, his mother, said Monday.
“ He was like, ‘ Mom, I hope I make it out,’” she said.
“ And I was like, ‘ You will make it out, Tommy. I’ve seen you’” in her dreams, she said she told him.
“ I know you will make it out. And he said ‘ Well, I hope I have all my limbs,’” she said.
“ I’ve seen you running. And you were proud and happy. I know that you’ll have all your limbs.”
“ Then he said, ‘ Well, I hope I make you proud,’” she said, starting to cry. She told him then she was proud of him, she said. The Byrds, who also have a daughter, HollyNoel Elizabeth Byrd, are still in shock.
They learned Sunday afternoon about their son’s death.
Byrd was a rifleman in the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division, III Marine Expeditionary Force, the Associated Press reported. The Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii- based unit arrived in Iraq last month, the AP said.
His parents said the unit went to Kuwait this summer before moving into Iraq.
A 1999 graduate of North Marion High School, Byrd was married while stationed in Hawaii.
His wife, Jessica Marie Byrd, a Philadelphia, Pa. native, is expecting their first child — a boy — on Jan.
28. His parents are fixing up a small home behind theirs so she could move from Hawaii and stay with them when she has the baby.
In 2000, a year after graduation, Byrd and several friends went to Myrtle Beach, S. C.
They quickly found restaurant jobs at the popular resort, his father said. The elder Byrd, 47, is a telecommunications specialist with Allegheny Power; his wife works at the dentistry school of West Virginia University.
While military recruiters had pursued Tommy in high school, it wasn’t until the 9/ 11 attacks in 2001 that he decided to enlist in the Marines, his father said.
“ That’s why he went in, in January 2002,” he said.
He last saw his son at Christmas 2001, just before Tommy went to boot camp.
“ He wanted infantry, infantry all the way,” he said.
Last Christmas, Nan flew to Hawaii to see her son.
His marriage, and the news that his wife was pregnant, matured him — more so than the Marine Corps, she believes.
“ It gave him a purpose. He grew up then,” she said.
Although he was not a hunter — “ I kept him away from guns” while he was a teen, she said — he was an excellent shot. “ He could shoot anything,” she said.
Byrd competed on a Marine shooting team in Hawaii.
“ He just wanted to be part of something that had very high standards,” she said.

[Hubert Flottz]

1. Damn, that is so sad!

I feel sorry for the family!