Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Veteran dies saving employee from gunman

Family, friends remember Carter’s kindness
SHEILA HAGAR
WALLA WALLA UNION-BULLETIN

MILTON-FREEWATER - Everyone knew Rob Carter, friends and family of the Milton-Freewater native said Saturday.

Carter, 58, died Friday doing just what he was known for - cherishing and protecting those he loved. When a gunman entered Carter's business shop, Carter threw himself over his employee to shield her from gunfire, McKenzie Marly said.

That's how her father did things, she explained. "He took care of everyone."

Cecil "Rob" Carter was born to Ray and Kathy Carter on July 18, 1953. He and his brothers, Alan and Cliff, found plenty of trouble to get into, much of it fights among themselves, Marly, 33, said, reciting family legend. "But if anyone messed with any one of them, you had to deal with ‘The Carter Boys.' That's what they were known as. But they were brothers in every way."

The family, living in the home place on Chuckhole Lane, had orchards west of town and raised Christmas tress in the mountains. Rob attended McLoughlin Union High School and went into the U.S. Army, serving in Germany.

Carter married his high school sweetheart, Pam Kemp. They later divorced, family members said.
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Mike Colalillo, WWII Medal of Honor, passed away at 86

WWII Medal of Honor recipient dies at 86
The Associated Press
Posted : Tuesday Jan 3, 2012 7:44:59 EST
DULUTH, Minn. — Mike Colalillo, the last Medal of Honor recipient in Minnesota, has died. He was 86.

Colalillo died Friday at a Duluth nursing home, the Dougherty Funeral Home confirmed Monday.

He received the nation's highest military honor for bravery in combat for killing or wounding 25 Germans and helping a seriously wounded comrade to safety during a fierce firefight near Untergriesheim, Germany, on April 7, 1945, toward the end of World War II.

Forty-six Minnesotans, including Colalillo, have received the Medal of Honor, according to the Minnesota Military Museum at Camp Ripley in Little Falls. According to the Medal of Honor Society, Colalillo's death leaves 84 recipients still living across the U.S.

According to the official citation, the private first class was pinned down with other members of his company. The rifleman stood up amid heavy artillery, mortar and machine-gun fire, shouted to the company to follow, and ran forward while firing his machine pistol.

"Inspired by his example, his comrades advanced in the face of savage enemy fire," the citation read.

When his pistol was disabled by shrapnel, Colalillo climbed onto a friendly tank and manned its machine gun. And, as "bullets rattled about him, fired at an enemy emplacement with such devastating accuracy that he killed or wounded at least 10 hostile soldiers and destroyed their machine gun."
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2 Navy Pilots Among Dead in Murder, Suicide Pact

2 Navy Pilots Among Dead in Murder, Suicide Pact

January 03, 2012
Associated Press
by Amy Taxin
Two Navy pilots and the sister of one of them were among four people killed in an apparent New Years Day murder-suicide on the wealthy island of Coronado off the coast of San Diego, officials say.

The two F/A-18 pilots were in training at the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, the base said. The San Diego County Medical Examiner's Office initially posted on its website that the pilots were both 25-year-old males and that a third male among the dead was a 31-year-old resident of nearby Chula Vista.

The county office later took the information off the website, according to the Reuters news service.

Sheriff’s deputies found the bodies shortly after 2 a.m. Sunday when responding to a call about shots being fired at the residence.

Though officials have yet to identify all the dead, the Navy confirmed for The Associated Press that David Reis, 25, of Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, and his sister Karen Reis, 24,were among the four.Their father, Tom Reis of Bakersfield, told AP that he didn’t know who else was living in the condo of the wealthy seaside community where his son was staying.

"He just had his first F/A-18 flight," Tom Reis said. "Oh man, he loved it."

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Navy police called in for murder-suicide investigation Monday, January 2, 2012

UK Afghanistan hero who could bear the horrors of war no longer

Rest in Peace, Lance Sergeant Dan Collins: The Afghanistan hero who could bear the horrors of war no longer
By TOBY HARNDEN
Last updated at 12:09 PM on 3rd January 2012
Lance Corporal Dane Elson (left) and Lance Sergeant Dan Collins in Afghanistan on the eve of Operation Panther's Claw in 2009
Lance Sergeant Dan Collins lived for the Welsh Guards. He joined up at 16 and served for more than 13 years. He loved being a soldier - part of his email address was 'ArmyDan' - and he was immensely proud of his service in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan.

In Helmand in 2009, Collins should have died several times but miraculously survived being shot in the back, his leg being grazed by a bullet and being caught in two bomb blasts. He was a joker but also a leader. He witnessed some things no human being should see but never wavered under fire.

On New Year's Day, Collins telephoned the police from the Preseli Mountains just outside the village of Rosebush in Pembrokeshire in west Wales and told them he was going to hang himself. Helicopters were scrambled and a search was launched but it was several hours before his body was found at an old slate quarry in the mountains.
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Dispute over cross casts light on four fallen Marines

Dispute over cross casts light on four fallen Marines
The controversial hilltop memorial at Camp Pendleton honors two enlisted men and two officers, three of whom helped erect a cross there in 2003 before going to Iraq.

By Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times
January 3, 2012
Scott Radetski, 49, a retired Navy chaplain; Sgt. Josue Magana, 32; and Staff Sgt. Justin Rettenberger, 31, work to secure a cross at Camp Pendleton on Veterans Day. A constitutional scholar says that because the crosses are only visible from Camp Pendleton they could be viewed as a memorial rather than having a religious purpose. (Rick Loomis, Los Angeles Times / November 11, 2011)
Reporting from San Diego— In the early days of the U.S. battle with the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, the four Marines from Camp Pendleton were among those troops on the front lines in Anbar province.

The two enlisted Marines would not survive those violent days in the spring of 2004: one was killed by "friendly fire" when a mortar round went awry and one was mortally wounded while hurling a grenade to repel an enemy assault, bravery for which he was posthumously awarded the Silver Star.

The two officers survived, only later to be killed in other battles in other parts of the country: one by gunfire while leading a raid in Baghdad to kill or capture a "high-value" target in 2007 and one by stepping on a buried bomb while scouting an attack position near the Syrian border in 2005.

Now the four — Lance Cpls. Robert Zurheide and Aaron Austin, and Majs. Douglas Zembiec and Ray Mendoza — are the focal point of a legal dispute about how best to honor their service and sacrifice, and that of other U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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