Angel De Jesus Lucio Ramirez, Army, Sergeant -- Rest In Peace

Angel De Jesus Lucio Ramirez, 22

Army, Sergeant
Based: Giessen, Germany
1st Battalion, 16th Engineer Battalion, 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division
Supporting: Operation Iraqi Freedom
Died: November 11, 2006
Ramadi, Iraq
Married
Gender: Male
Hometown: Pacoima
High School: San Fernando High (San Fernando)
Foreign Country of Birth: Mexico
Burial: Los Angeles National Cemetery, Westwood

Army Sgt. Angel de Jesus Lucio Ramirez knew how much his mother worried about him during his first combat tour in Iraq. So during his second tour he would call home two or more times a week to reassure her that all was well.

On Nov. 9, Marina Lucio answered the phone in her Bakersfield home to hear her son offer a quick hello. The 22-year-old soldier said he was going on a two-day mission and would call again when he returned.

Three days later, two soldiers in crisp Army greens knocked on her door with the news that Lucio had been killed by a roadside bomb on Veterans Day, Nov. 11.

"At least I got to talk to him one last time," she said. "He said he loved us and his brothers and sisters very much. That was the last thing he told me."

Lucio was among three soldiers killed in the explosion while on a security escort mission in Ramadi, west of Baghdad. They were all assigned to the 16th Engineer Battalion, 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division in Giessen, Germany.

A graduate of San Fernando High School in Pacoima, Lucio moved with his family from Saltillo, Mexico, when he was 11. He adapted quickly to his new homeland and took an interest in the U.S. military.

Read the entire LA Times article about Army Sergeant Angel De Jesus Lucio Ramirez here.

Also killed on that day with Army Sergeant Angel De Jesus Lucio Ramirez were 

Staff Sergeant William S. Jackson II, 29, of Saginaw, Michigan

and Staff Sergeant Misael Martinez, 24, of Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Shawn E. Dressler, Army, Sergeant -- Rest In Peace

Shawn E. Dressler, 22

Army, Sergeant
Based: Schweinfurt, Germany
1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division
Supporting: Operation Iraqi Freedom
Died: June 2, 2007
Baghdad, Iraq

Married

Gender: Male
Hometown: Santa Maria
High School: Santa Maria High (Santa Maria)
Burial: Oconee Hill Cemetery, Athens, Ga.

Years of hunting wild turkeys in the backwoods outside Santa Maria, Calif., helped turn Army Sgt. Shawn E. Dressler into a good marksman.

When he enlisted in 2002 and headed overseas for two tours in Iraq, Dressler sat in the gunner's seat every time his team rolled out.

During his last trip home in April, Dressler's father, Cecil, watched him expertly stalk and shoot a turkey.

"I nearly blew the hunt for him, but he was so steady," his father said. "He was a good boy and a good soldier."

Joshua D. Brown

Dressler, 22, was on patrol June 2 when a roadside bomb exploded next to his Humvee in Baghdad. He died about 30 minutes later. Another soldier injured in the blast, Army Pfc. Joshua D. Brown, 26, of Tampa, Fla., died the next day.

A third-generation serviceman -- his grandfathers were in the Army and Marine Corps, and his dad was an engineer for the Navy -- Dressler learned to shoot with his father's boltaction shotgun when he was 10.

When he was a teenager, Dressler and his father scouted out the roughest parts of Los Padres National Forest and spent days hunting, hiking, fishing and camping.

Dressler joined the Army after graduating from Santa Maria High School and talked about pursuing a career in law enforcement once he got out. But after two tours in Iraq, he backed off the idea and considered becoming a forest ranger or game warden. He always tuned in to the History Channel and thought about going back to school to become a history teacher.

During the last few months, Dressler had a few close calls in Iraq, family members said. He once took a spray of bullets to the chest. His Kevlar vest saved him, but the force from the attack knocked him over, his father said. Still, he hardly ever let on to family members that he had been in danger.
...
Dressler liked to kid his Army colleagues and tried to keep things light.
...
On his trip home in April, Dressler and his father picked up an old routine and left the house at 4 a.m. to hunt turkeys.


The whole day, his father recalled, Dressler kept thanking him for raising him well -- as if he wanted to make sure he said it plenty of times in case something bad happened.


"Dad, thank you for taking me out over the years," he said.


"Son, that's what dads do," his father replied.

Dressler's wife, Amanda, believes he married her last year -- ahead of their plans -- to make sure she would be taken care of...

On the day he died, Dressler called his wife and told her that he would be heading out on patrol soon.

They had closed escrow on a three-bedroom house in Commerce, Ga., about a week earlier, and Amanda told him that she had finished painting the inside walls. She expected the carpet to be put in that day.

Dressler died 12 hours later. He was buried in Athens, Ga., his wife's hometown.

In addition to his wife and father, Dressler is survived by his mother, Tonya; a sister, Melissa, 20; and two stepbrothers, James, 36, and Daniel, 32.

Read the entire LA Times story about Army Sergeant Shawn E. Dressler here. 

Find more at Military Times, 

the Iraq Page 

and Spread The Word. 

Visit Sergeant Shawn E. Dressler's Guest Book.

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 Army Private 1st Class Joshua D. Brown -- Rest In Peace

Javier Chavez Jr., Marines, Private 1st Class -- Rest In Peace

Javier Chavez Jr., 19

Marines, Private 1st Class
Based: Camp Pendleton
3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force
Supporting: Operation Iraqi Freedom
Died: February 9, 2006
Fallouja (near), Iraq
Married
Gender: Male
Hometown: Cutler
High School: Orosi High (Orosi)
Burial: Hanford Cemetery, Hanford, Calif.

Javier Chavez Jr.'s 19-year-old widow doesn't know what to call herself.

Janie Gonzales says she didn't even have a chance to change her last name to Chavez in the blur of her husband's final months.

He graduated from high school early to join the Marine Corps, went to Camp Pendleton for boot camp and then to infantry school. He came home, proposed to her, was married a week later and then got on a plane for Iraq.

On Feb. 9, somewhere near Fallouja, Chavez got out of a Humvee and stepped on a roadside bomb. It took his life, along with that of another Marine [Cpl. Ross A. Smith, 21 of Wyoming, MI].
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The private first class was a quiet 19-year-old from Cutler, Calif., a Central Valley farming town a few miles from Visalia, where he was born. He left behind a family grasping at unfulfilled plans.

"They were going to have a church wedding, buy a house," said his father, Javier Chavez Sr. "He wanted to work with the government, the Highway Patrol, or the FBI as a detective."

"I'm kinda mad," his wife said. "He was young. He wanted so many things in his life. It's not fair for anybody."


She had known Chavez, who went by the nickname of Javi, since grade school.


"He liked me, but I never paid attention to him," she said. "By high school, I liked him and he never paid attention to me. He was all shy. Really quiet. I had to make the move on him."


She remembers how Chavez loved pets. He had an iguana named MoJo, along with guinea pigs and turtles. Their first date was a movie, but Chavez brought his dog, Pancho, so they couldn't get in. Instead, they went to dinner.


Later, Janie said, Chavez told her how he wanted to join the Marines. He was eager to go to Iraq. He wanted to see how it was.


"How can you be a Marine?" Janie said she asked him. "You're so quiet." She said she told him that they could go to college together. But Chavez was determined. Janie said he felt like college wasn't for him.


At boot camp, a drill sergeant would make him yell for 30 minutes straight. He learned to be loud, she said.

Chavez was a romantic, she said. When he came home from Camp Pendleton, she said he told her that he wanted to take her on a romantic trip. She suggested Six Flags. "No, somewhere nice," she said he told her. "Just you and me."

They rented a hotel room in Pismo Beach, Calif. Chavez loved the beach, his father said, adding that his mother used to take him there. While walking on the beach, Chavez asked Janie if she would marry him.

"Yeah, of course," she said, not seeing the ring in his hand. "Didn't we already talk about this?"

When they went back to the hotel room, a friend of Chavez's had decorated it with "a million candles and red and white roses on the bed," Janie said. A week later, they signed their marriage papers. A month after that, he was on a plane for Iraq.

Read the entire LA Times article about Marine Private 1st Class Javier Chavez Jr. here, see more at Fallen Heroes and at Military Times.

Lance Cpl. Joshua B. Tallis, Company I, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, kneels in front of the memorial of Cpl. Ross Smith and Pfc. Javier Chavez Jr., who were killed in action Feb. 9, 2006. The company held a memorial service at Camp Smitty, Iraq, Feb. 20.

Angel De Jesus Lucio Ramirez, Army, Sergeant -- Rest In Peace

Angel De Jesus Lucio Ramirez, 22

Army, Sergeant
Based: Giessen, Germany
1st Battalion, 16th Engineer Battalion, 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division
Supporting: Operation Iraqi Freedom
Died: November 11, 2006
Ramadi, Iraq
Married
Gender: Male
Hometown: Pacoima
High School: San Fernando High (San Fernando)
Foreign Country of Birth: Mexico
Burial: Los Angeles National Cemetery, Westwood

Army Sgt. Angel de Jesus Lucio Ramirez knew how much his mother worried about him during his first combat tour in Iraq. So during his second tour he would call home two or more times a week to reassure her that all was well.

On Nov. 9, Marina Lucio answered the phone in her Bakersfield home to hear her son offer a quick hello. The 22-year-old soldier said he was going on a two-day mission and would call again when he returned.

Three days later, two soldiers in crisp Army greens knocked on her door with the news that Lucio had been killed by a roadside bomb on Veterans Day, Nov. 11.

"At least I got to talk to him one last time," she said. "He said he loved us and his brothers and sisters very much. That was the last thing he told me."

Lucio was among three soldiers killed in the explosion while on a security escort mission in Ramadi, west of Baghdad. They were all assigned to the 16th Engineer Battalion, 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division in Giessen, Germany.

A graduate of San Fernando High School in Pacoima, Lucio moved with his family from Saltillo, Mexico, when he was 11. He adapted quickly to his new homeland and took an interest in the U.S. military.

Read the entire LA Times article about Army Sergeant Angel De Jesus Lucio Ramirez here.

Also killed on that day with Army Sergeant Angel De Jesus Lucio Ramirez were Staff Sergeant William S. Jackson II, 29, of Saginaw, Michigan and Staff Sergeant Misael Martinez, 24, of Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Sean K.A. Langevin, Army, Specialist -- Rest In Peace

Sean K.A. Langevin, 23

Army, Specialist
Based: Vicenza, Italy
2nd Battalion, 503rd Airborne Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team
Supporting: Operation Enduring Freedom
Died: November 9, 2007
Aranus, Afghanistan
Married, 1 child
Gender: Male
Hometown: Walnut Creek
High School: Ygnacio Valley High (Concord)
Burial: Queen of Heaven Cemetery, Lafayette, Calif.

Sean K. A. Langevin, 23, of Walnut Creek, Calif.; specialist, Army. Langevin was among six troops who died when they were attacked with rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire in an ambush Nov. 9 while on foot patrol in eastern Afghanistan's Nuristan province. He was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Airborne Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team in Vicenza, Italy.

Visit the Guest Book of Army Specialist Sean K.A. Langevin here and read about him here

Army Specialist Sean K.A. Langevin died along with five others -- Army Captain Matthew C. Ferrara, Sgt. Jeffery S. Mersman, Spc. Lester G. Roque, Pfc. Joseph M. Lancour, and Marine Sgt. Phillip A. Bocks. Eight paratroopers and eleven Afghan soldiers were wounded. This is the video of their medevac: