Posted on 02/01/2010 7:02:32 PM PST by ivyleaguebrat
As a boy in Frederick, Md., David Smith loved to play with his Army and G.I. Joe action figures and spent hours rescuing his older sister Kristen from all manner of imagined peril. As a young man just out of high school, Smith joined the Marine Corps, because he was moved, his friends and family said, to make a difference and put the lives of others ahead of his own. He served in Iraq in 2006 and then volunteered for a tour of duty in Afghanistan. On Tuesday, Sgt. David Smith, 25, died of injuries suffered in a suicide bomber attack.
Smith's family traveled Saturday to Dover Air Force Base to, as his sister Kristen Forse said shakily, "welcome him home."
Smith, a member of the Marine Reserve's 4th Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, shipped out in October to Afghanistan's Helmand province in the south, where a resurgent Taliban movement has made it the deadliest region in the country. On Jan. 23, Smith and other Marines were supporting Afghan police in providing security around a local bazaar, setting up barbed wire to protect against insurgent attacks, Forse said U.S. military officials and a soldier wounded in the attack told the family.
Somehow, she said, a suicide bomber made it through the security perimeter and detonated a bomb, which killed three Marines and injured four others. A ball bearing from the makeshift bomb hit the back of her brother's head, she said. A medic got Smith's heart beating again, she said, and he was transported to a military hospital in Kandahar, then flown to the Bagram air base and then to Germany, where he was declared brain dead.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Maryland PING!
RIP.
Rest In Peace Sgt. Smith.
May he rest in peace knowing he did his duty. Lord accept him into your arms. A job well done.
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