Sniper-fire.. Har-dee-har-har & yuk-yuk, guffaw [View All]

[SoCalDem]

Gregory B. Rundell

Friday, March 28 2008 @ 02:13 PM EDT
Contributed by: James Van Thach
Views: 326
Individuals US

Pioneer Press, MN -

A young Minnesota soldier wrote a letter to his mother telling her he stood ready to make a sacrifice so that others might live free. On Wednesday, just three months after being deployed to Iraq, he made that sacrifice.



Army Spc. Gregory B. Rundell, a 21-year-old North St. Paul native, was killed by hostile fire Wednesday while stationed at a U.S. military base north of Baghdad.
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Richardson described her son as "a gentle spirit" with a great sense of humor and a knack for drawing. "Greg was a good kid," she said, with more than a dozen family members lined up behind her. "I stand tall and brave because my son stood tall and brave." Rundell graduated from North St. Paul High School in 2004. He joined the Army in 2005 and was deployed to Iraq last December for an expected one-year tour of duty as a member of a Stryker armored vehicle unit.

He was in a tower when he was hit by small-arms fire from a sniper, his family said. The Department of Defense had not officially announced his death as of Thursday night. Rundell is the 60th Minnesota member of the military to die in Iraq since the war began five years ago.When her son announced he was joining the Army, Richardson said, "it broke my heart." But Rundell had a goal. He had his sights on becoming a police officer because he wanted to help people, his mother said. He believed his experience in Iraq would only make him a better cop.
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Kyle Richardson, Rundell's older brother, was deployed to Iraq a few years ago with the Minnesota National Guard and had warned his younger brother of the dangers. "I told him what to expect," Kyle Richardson said Thursday during the family's announcement at the Maryland Avenue armory. "Trust your gut. If something doesn't feel right, it's not right. I told him just to come back alive and keep his head low."

snip...for the rest of this young man's too-short life
http://iraq.pigstye.net/article.php/GregoryBRundell