Based: Ft. Leonard Wood, Mo.
515 Sapper Company, 5th Engineer Battalion, 4th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade
Supporting: Operation Iraqi Freedom
Died: January 24, 2009
Kut, Iraq
Single
Gender: Male
Hometown: Corona
High School: Buena Vista High (Corona)
Burial: Ft. Rosecrans National Cemetery, San Diego
Pvt. Grant Cotting died Jan. 24 in Kut, Iraq, of injuries from a non-combat-related incident. He was 19. His death is under investigation.Read the entire LA Times article about Army Private Grant A. Cotting here, find the Press Enterprise story here, a Memorial Page here and visit Private Cotting's Guest Book here.
Cotting was serving as a combat engineer, responsible for clearing roads and surrounding areas of improvised explosive devices.
[His friend Kelsey] Kingston said her friend made the decision to join the Army "all by himself. No one else was involved in it. When he wanted something, he just went out and got it."
A month before his departure to Iraq, Cotting wrote a MySpace entry titled, "Reasons why I joined." In it, he explained his decision to enlist, among them: "For family, for friends, for enemies, for no-bodies, for future flames, for past romances. . . ."
He continued, "I fight for us to remember our past, to get to our future, to live our lives. . . . But above all those, I Am Your Soldier."
Cotting is survived by his parents, Craig and Amanda Cotting of Corona, and brothers Branden, 15; Nick, 10; Scott, 7; and Lucas, 4. He is buried at Ft. Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego.
As friends think of him now, they often recall his knack for turning a bad day around with a wry joke. Once, after a particularly stressful day, Kingston vented on her MySpace page, saying, "Drama is like a pie in the face. It's really funny when it happens to someone else, but not when there's a pie in your own face."
She ended the post with a good-natured jab at Cotting: "Haha, find the silver lining in that one."
Cotting wrote back: "The pie tin."
It made her day.
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