Sgt. 1st Class Raymond J. Munden, 35, of Mesquite, Texas, died Feb. 16 at Forward Operating Base Tillman in Paktika Province, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when insurgents attacked his unit using indirect fire. He was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), Fort Campbell, Ky.
Raymond Munden never talked about being a doctor or a lawyer. All he ever wanted to do was join the Army.
Over 17 years, he completed five tours of duty overseas, including two in Iraq. On Monday, three weeks shy of completing his sixth stint – his second in Afghanistan – Sgt. 1st Class Munden was killed in a grenade attack in a remote outpost near the Pakistani border.
The 35-year-old soldier leaves behind a wife and four children, the youngest 2 years old, and a record of commitment to the job he loved.
He is the second Dallas-area soldier from the Band of Brothers unit – the 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division – to be killed in that corner of Afghanistan in six days.
Munden was at Forward Operating Base Tillman, about two miles from the Pakistani border, when a sniper launched an RPG, or rocket-propelled grenade, said his stepfather, Dwaine Clark of Mesquite.
His stepson was off duty and walking back to his barracks when the grenade landed about 10 feet behind him. "He was very alert, very cautious," Clark said, "but no one was expecting that."
Munden's mother, Billie Clark, has been struggling with the news, her husband said. "She can't sleep, but she's so dead-tired she can barely stay awake," he said. "We're Christians, and she knows he had a salvation experience when he was 14, so she has that to fall back on. But this world will never be the same for her," he said. Munden and his mom moved to Mesquite when his parents divorced, Dwaine Clark said.
"She always said Raymond was her protector, even though he was only 13, because it was just the two of them then," his stepfather said.
Munden graduated in 1991 from Mesquite High School, where he played football. His coach, Mickey DeLamar, said Munden didn't start for the Skeeters but played quite a bit and practiced hard.
"He was one of those kids who just loved the game, and he took a lot of pride in practice. He played a lot on the scout team," DeLamar said. "When you think about it, those kids were the reason we were successful – they did such a great job simulating what we'd see on Friday night. "He had a great attitude."
But even in high school, he was set on joining the Army. His father, Ralph Munden of Richland, Mo., made a career of the Army.
"He was a gung-ho soldier," his father-in-law, Henry J. Koshofer of Lancaster, N.Y., told the Buffalo News. "He loved it. The loves of his life were his children and wife and the Army."
In 2002, People magazine wrote about Munden, then in his first tour in Afghanistan, and his family back home. He was overseas when his older daughter, Sydney, was born back in the states, half a world away, and he remembered speaking his first words to her over a video hookup. Munden and his wife, Kelly, later had another daughter, Kailey, now 2. He also has two sons from a previous marriage, Gaven, 13, and Garrett, 12.
After his overseas deployments, including tours in Somalia and Haiti, and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, Munden was eager for his upcoming stateside assignment at West Point, Koshofer said.
"He was coming home in three more weeks, which makes it all the worse for us," Dwaine Clark said. "He was going to West Point to help train the cadets in urban combat, the house-to-house fighting. "We had started breathing a little bit easier because it was so close to being over with."
Munden's body was returned to the U.S. on Thursday, with services pending. Services will be in Buffalo, where his wife is from.
"But because he has a lot of friends in Mesquite, we'll have a memorial here sometime," Dwaine Clark said. "We just don't know when."
0 comments:
Post a Comment