Fallen S.A. Soldier Enlisted To Please Daughter

clickonsa ^

[chance33_98]

Fallen S.A. Soldier Enlisted To Please Daughter

Frantz Dies In Iraq Grenade Attack

Posted: 12:14 p.m. CDT June 20, 2003

SAN ANTONIO -- From Operation Iraqi Freedom, a San Antonio soldier told of his nights spent in the charred remains of one of Saddam Hussein's palaces and days spent guarding the Central Bank of Baghdad.

To Robert L. Frantz's family, it appeared the 19-year-old high school dropout with a 2-year-old daughter and plans to marry had matured quickly since joining the Army and then going overseas for the war in Iraq.

"He wanted his daughter to be proud of him," said his stepfather, Vincent Smith, a Lackland Air Force Base firefighter. "He grew into a man strictly overnight, by joining the Army. He was a little scared, but excited. He knew he was going to do good things."

But Frantz died Wednesday as a result of a grenade attack the previous night, according to Fort Sam Houston spokesman Phil Reidinger.

Frantz, assigned to the 1st Battalion, 36th Infantry, was hit with shrapnel while he was standing guard duty. An unknown assailant threw the grenade over a wall in the Iraqi capital.

For the San Antonio native who joined the Army 10 months ago and his family, "this was supposed to be a happy week" on the heels of the Spurs' NBA championship, said Frantz's mother, Kim Smith.

Instead, the family spent the day coping with the death of Frantz, an Army private first class.

"We thought the war was over," his mother told the San Antonio Express-News in Friday's editions. "I told him, `Be careful. Watch your back.' But I had no thoughts that there would be this."

Frantz was about 4 when his father died. His family moved a short time later from Michigan to San Antonio, where he attended elementary and middle school. He attended Marshall High School, then withdrew and earned a General Educational Development diploma.

Later while waiting tables at an International House of Pancakes, Frantz met the woman he would eventually makes plans with to marry, Ana Perez.

His daughter, Shannon, 2, is in the custody of her mother, who lives in San Antonio and has remained close to Frantz's family.

Frantz also had a 22-year-old sister, Heather Frantz, and a stepsister, stepbrother and a 3-year-old stepbrother, who is too young to understand the tragedy.

"He's been telling us, `Don't be sad, Robby's coming home,"' Vincent Smith said.

Army officials haven't said what Frantz, with the German-based 36th Infantry Regiment, was doing when he was killed.

Reidinger said Thursday that a second soldier from San Antonio was also killed in Iraq in recent days, but he would not release that name because family notification had not been completed.

[ChemistCat]

You have a sad job this morning, finding all the tragedy. God bless this family and that little girl.

[SunStar]

I think it's time we started shooting first and asking questions later... No American death toll is acceptable, in my opinion.

[wideawake]

I agree. Whether we liquidate 10 or 10,000 of the terrorists in Iraq we will still be accused of wrongdoing.

After Hitler fell, thousands and thousands of party apparatchiks in France and Germany disappeared, never to be heard from again.

And it's a good thing too.

Iraq could use a taste of the same medicine.

[cavtrooper21]

I hope that the little girl's mother will tell her that her daddy died a hero, as an American Soldier, doing his duty.
Looks like this young man was well on his way to turning his life around before he was KIA'd.
I also hope the his buddies "took some hair" in return.