One of Ours

FORWARD OPERATING BASE GABE, Iraq, June 22 -- Army Pfc. Jason N. Lynch was taking his one-hour shift behind a Humvee-mounted .50-caliber machine gun when the AK-47s started crackling again, just before dusk. As he responded by raking the source of enemy fire, sticking his head and torso out the roof to aim, a single 7.62mm round found a mortal opening just below Lynch's body armor and ripped into his right side.

Lynch, 21, a 6-foot-2 St. Croix islander who reveled in reggae music and yearned to return to his Caribbean home, immediately slumped down into the Humvee, his comrades in Charlie Battery recalled, and he shouted out to no one in particular: "Ah! I'm hit." Those words -- uttered Friday at 6:50 p.m. in Buhriz, a rebellious, date-growing village about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad -- were the last they heard him say.

Although medics struggled to save his life, the internal bleeding was massive, they said, and Lynch swiftly went into shock...

[...]

A group of insurgents using Buhriz as their base made their intentions clear last week by firing rocket-propelled grenades as U.S. officers met with the mayor. So Pittard's U.S. occupation forces went into town, waited for an attack and responded hard when it came.

"We waxed them," he said in an interview.

[...]

"We occupied the strong point because we knew then we would not have to chase down an elusive enemy," said the first to speak, Lt. Col. Steve Bullimore, 43, of St. Joseph, Mo. "We owe it to Jason, to his family, that his death not be in vain, that his sacrifice not in any way be diminished."...