"The Last Full Measure of Devotion"
Posted on 04/01/2003 5:03:34 PM PST by mdittmar
Hundreds attended a brief but emotional funeral service Tuesday for a Marine who was one of the first American combat casualties in the war in Iraq.
Therrel Shane Childers, 30, died March 21 after being shot in the abdomen in an assault on a pumping station in Iraq. Known as Shane, he was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment based at Camp Pendleton, Calif.
Childers was an enlisted Marine who won a commission as a second lieutenant. The 1991 Gulf War veteran was promoted posthumously to first lieutenant.
Friends and relatives say Childers was a born leader, serious and focused, whose life revolved around being a Marine.
"His idea of fun was skiing, backpacking, anything to keep in shape for the Marines," said Army Sgt. Richard Brown, Childers' brother-in-law.
As the threat of war neared, "his concerns were for his men," Cmdr. Paul Moore, a retired Navy chaplain, told the mourners. "He emanated a courageous sense about him, that nothing scared him."
Gov. Dave Freudenthal directed that flags at state buildings be lowered to half-staff Tuesday in honor of Childers, who wasn't from the northern Wyoming town but often visited his parents, Joseph and Judy Childers, here.
Residents waving flags lined the town's main street as a hearse carried Childers' body to the college gym where there funeral was held. Some Northwest College students cut class to wave flags and offer their condolences. Firefighters and ambulance drivers stood along the route, hats in hand.
Retired Master Sgt. Steve Whitten, who served with Childers and said he regarded him as a son, said his wife often ribbed Childers about being single. But Childers had a one-track mind.
"He had plenty of girls after him," he said. But "when it came to relationships, Shane was married to the Marine Corps."
Childers graduated from the Marine Enlisted Commissioning Education Program at The Citadel in South Carolina two years ago and fulfilled a promise to get his college degree. He was on course to earn the silver bar of a first lieutenant later this year, Whitten said.
A Marine's Marine.
In God's hands and our hearts forever.
God bless the fallen for they shall rise again.
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