USASOC Soldiers killed in Helicopter Crash in Afghanistan

[Mike792]

Rest In Peace.

[csquare]

Rest in Peace.

[Calrngr]

RIP.

[rwd]

SSG Keith Bishop.

Keith came to my sniper section from Korea the same time as we began a week long, intensive sniper skills sustainment range and competition. I had a strong section of motivated studs and I told him, getting to lead these guys would require work. What did Keith do? In typical fashion, hardly even knowing the soldiers, as soon as one mouthed off over a particular shot, Keith placed his weapon on safe and shoulder tackled the sniper, balling him up into submission. Thus cementing himself as the sniper team leader.
Later, long after we decided to go to Selection together, Keith awoke, ankle sore and suffering from a serious cold (thank you Scuba Road). I looked at his face that morning and thought, "Damn, Keith is done.". He was emaciated and weak, and the medic told him he was pulling him to the rear for evaluation. Dustin, my other sniper I'd brought to Selection asked me if I thought he was done. There was no doubt. No doubt as I watched Keith drive away in the back of a pick-up, that he would be back and I was right. He came back, finished the STAR course and we hugged at graduation, making fun of the guys crying to the Barry Sadler song.
I was there as his Wife embarrassed him, making him stand in his Class A's as she played "The Ballad of the Green Berets." Keith Bishop was a warrior, one of us and may God have mercy on his soul.

I love you brother.

[mojaveman]

Ut fortis proeliator

To the brave warriors...

[echoes]

Rest-In-Peace.

Your service and sacrifice will never be forgotten.

Holly

[Rogue]

Rest in Peace

[Richard]

North Texas welcomed home a fallen hero on Wednesday.
4 Nov 2009

The body of Army Staff Sgt. Shawn McNabb arrived at the Greenville Municipal Airport at noon, with units from several area fire departments on hand to provide an honorary cascade of water as the plane taxiied to a waiting hearse.

McNabb's body was then escorted by military vehicles to Terrell.

Sgt. McNabb was one of 14 Americans killed in helicopter crashes in Afghanistan last month. His hometown is Poetry, Texas.

Visitation is scheduled for Thursday evening in Terrell . A funeral service with full military honors will be held on Fridayat DFW National Cemetery.

McNabb's father is a retired Greenville firefighter. Forney, Greenville and Terrell firefighters were all involved in honoring McNabb and his family.

[JJ_BPK]

RIP Brothers, Vaya con Dios..

[pgrtop]

The Funeral Service and Interment for SSG McNabb are scheduled for tomorrow, November 6th. The Funeral Service will be held at the First Baptist Church of Terrell, Texas at 10 AM with Interment to follow at DFW National Cemetery.

The Patriot Guard Riders were honored with an invitation to attend this grieving family and will "Stand Tall and Silent" in honor of SSG McNabb's sacrifice.

Top
Ride Captain
Patriot Guard Riders of Texas

[Richard]

Medford Soldier's Body Returns To LI
5 Nov 2009

Julie Quappe had never met Staff Sgt. Keith Bishop, who died in Afghanistan last week. But as Bishop's body arrived at MacArthur Airport Thursday morning, Quappe and dozens of her co-workers at GE Aviation lined the street in front of their building, a few blocks from the airport, to watch the soldier's procession go by.

"He gave his life for our country," said Quappe, a supervisor from Patchogue. "It's just respect."

Bishop, 28, a Green Beret, died Oct. 26 from wounds suffered when the MH-47 helicopter he was aboard crashed just after takeoff in northwestern Afghanistan.

Assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group out of Fort Bragg, N.C., Bishop was one of 10 Americans killed after a nighttime drug and arms interdiction mission.

Bishop, who graduated from Patchogue-Medford High School in 1999, joined the Army in 2002 and lived near Fort Bragg with his wife, Maggie.

He had been a member of a Special Operations team working to stem the heroin-producing opium trade that helps finance the anti-U.S. insurgency.

As the hearse bearing his body drove by Thursday morning, a hush fell over the crowd, and they spread out along the street to watch as the procession traveled under two giant flags hoisted by firetrucks.

connections
Barack Obama Taliban Abdullah Abdullah United Nations White House "I think it's great they're doing this," said Al Roman, a software maintenance employee at the Federal Aviation Administration building on Johnson Avenue.

Mike Mark, a GE Aviation maintenance technician from Central Islip, shook his head and said, "This is sad."

[greenberetTFS]

Rest in Peace, Warriors .....................

Big Teddy

[Richard]

Today's LA Times.

Richard

Sgt. 1st Class David E. Metzger dies in Afghanistan at 32
Patrick J. McDonnell, LA Times, 14 Feb 2010

David E. Metzger seemed destined to be a soldier.

"He always had a kind of passion for the military," said his longtime friend, Rob Casillas, who recalled mock childhood battles in the suburbs of southern San Diego County. "We'd play little war games in the fields near the Mexican border."

At Mar Vista Senior High School in Imperial Beach, Metzger wore his slacks freshly pressed and his shoes scuff-free, and was careful to stay in shape, his friend recalled.

"He always fit the profile of a soldier," Casillas said. "He wanted to be like a G.I. Joe, I guess. That was his favorite toy."

Sgt. 1st Class Metzger, 32, was one of seven Army Special Operations Command soldiers killed in Afghanistan Oct. 26 when the helicopter carrying them crashed in the western province of Badghis. Also killed were three Drug Enforcement Administration agents. Most of those on board, including U.S. and Afghan personnel, survived the crash.

The incident shed light on a side conflict of the Afghanistan war -- the battle against drug traffickers, whose profits provide a major source of funding for insurgents. Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opium.

The helicopter crashed as it was extricating forces after a raid targeting a trafficking compound, authorities said. More than a dozen militants were killed in the firefight that preceded the crash, according to NATO's International Security Assistance Force.

U.S. officials called the crash an accident and said it was not the result of hostile fire. The cause remains under investigation but some reports have indicated that the helicopter's front rotor may have clipped a cliff in the predawn darkness.

Metzger was on his third deployment to Afghanistan. Fellow soldiers lauded his dedication and described him as a strapping, affable comrade who paid close attention to detail.

"He was someone you could count on," Master Sgt. Javier F. Martinez, the senior enlisted sergeant on Metzger's team, said by telephone from Afghanistan. "He was someone you'd want there in the heat of battle. You always knew he was watching your back."

Martinez, also a Californian, was not on the mission because he was away on emergency leave. Metzger assumed his responsibilities, including accounting for personnel and equipment during all phases of the operation.

"He was in the same spot I would have been in, exactly," said Martinez, who acknowledges a sense of survivor's guilt. "I would have been there."

Metzger was born in San Diego on April 7, 1977, and was reared there by his grandmother, Dolores Wallen.

Friends and family recall Metzger as a talented Little League pitcher (he aspired to be a professional baseball player before a knee injury), a skilled boxer and skateboarder, and a gifted artist who delighted in sketching birds that came to his family's patio for seeds. He and friends camped out, rode dirt bikes in Mexico and learned to surf.

He enlisted in 1996, in part to help support his wife Alicia, who grew up in the same neighborhood, and the couple's baby boy.

"I didn't want him to join, I wanted him to go to college," Wallen said, adding that her grandson called every week from wherever he was posted. "But it was his decision, and I respect that. I just gave him my blessing."

The Army helped Metzger fulfill his passion to see the world. Stationed for five years in Germany, he served in the Balkans peacekeeping mission. He also traveled throughout Europe on vacations with his family.

Transferred back to Ft. Bragg, N.C., Metzger joined the Army's elite special forces, graduating as a Green Beret in 2007. His wife worried about the danger but he assured her: "I was born to do this."

After Metzger's death, his loved ones noted the irony that he had succumbed in an accident after having survived so many hazardous deployments and flights across the globe. "My first thought was, 'Not Dave, he's invincible,' " said Alicia Metzger. "He was always escaping death."

The couple had divorced a few months before Metzger's death, Alicia said.

In late October, Metzger's remains were among those of 18 U.S. military personnel met by President Obama at Delaware's Dover Air Force Base. The media were allowed to witness the event, which was among the first such ceremonies to be open to reporters and photographers since the Pentagon lifted a nearly 20-year ban on coverage of returning war dead.

The president spent private time with Metzger's family, lauding him and leaving a profound impression.

"I didn't vote for Obama, but the way he spoke to my son and to me, he made it seem like he really did care," Alicia Metzger recalled. "It meant a lot to my son. Afterwards he said, 'I'm so proud of my dad.' "

Metzger was buried at Ft. Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego, after several services celebrating his life.

Survivors include Alicia Metzger and the couple's two sons, David Jr., 13, and Grant, 2, of Fort Bragg; and his grandmother Dolores Wallen and parents, David Metzger and Lisandra Holstein, of California.

"He died doing what he always wanted to do," said Wallen. "He wanted his boys to be proud of him."

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituari...tory?track=rss