Rising casualties "terrify" North Carolina base town

In five weeks, the 5th Squadron, 73rd Cavalry of the 82nd Airborne, based at North Carolina's Fort Bragg, has lost 18 soldiers in Iraq.

The squadron went into Diyala province with 330 troops. Now, the casualties have some so quickly and so fast that, as Kara Honbarger -- wife of a deployed squadron chaplain and mother of three -- told the Raleigh News & Observer, "we get nervous when the doorbell rings."

The N&O followed up today by telling more about the nine soldiers who died this week:

Nearly all of them came from small towns scattered across the United States. They were killed in a village so small it doesn't appear on most maps of Iraq.

One of the nine men had been a professional bull rider before enlisting in the Army. Some had fathers who had been in the military. One said he wanted to serve in Iraq to help the kids, and another kept asking his mother to send crayons, candy and toys to hand out. [...]

Kevin Gaspers(First Lieutenant, 26, Hastings, Neb.): Gaspers is described by friends as a country boy with a patriotic streak and a sense of humor.

Ryen King (Specialist, 19, Bowersville, Ga.): [When asked why he joined the Army, Ryen said:] "I need to serve and establish myself on my own." In e-mail to his father April 5, King, 19, wondered what life might have been like had he not joined the military but instead gone straight to college.

Garret Knoll (Private First Class, 23, Bad Axe, Mich.): His job -- saving lives as an Army medic -- made sense because he loved life so much. "He was a happy-go-lucky kid," Brady said. "He was very friendly. One thing I remember is his sense of humor. He was very sharp, very witty. And he had a nice circle of friends." ... Knoll had been a soldier less than a year. His grandmother said he had been in Iraq just two months.

Kenneth E. Locker Jr. (Staff Sergeant, 28, Wakefield, Neb.): He had shrapnel in his neck and hearing loss from a land mine explosion last fall, but Locker stayed in Iraq, where he felt the children needed him ... "He said, 'Dad, do you know why I'm over there?' " Ken Locker Sr. said. '"I'm over there for the children, that they might have a safer world to live in.'"

Randell Marshall (Sergeant, 22, Fitzgerald, Ga.): Marshall joined the Army in February 2005. Just more than two years later, he had decorations including a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. "He was a hard-core paratrooper," Sgt. Josh Meismer, who served with Marshall in Iraq, said in a statement. "He was a professional bull rider before joining the Army, and he took that determination into his job in the unit."

William Clint Moore (Staff Sergeant, 27, Benson, NC): "He wanted to serve God and his country. That's all he ever talked about doing," said Moore's sister, Leanne Benson of Benson.

Brice Pearson (Sergeant, 32, Phoenix): At 32, Pearson was the oldest soldier to die in the attack, and the only one from a large city, Phoenix. He hadn't been in the Army any longer than many of the younger soldiers, joining in 2004 ... "Brice didn't talk about work much off duty, but he always wanted to know how his guys were doing."

Michael J. Rodriguez (Specialist, 20, Sanford, NC): With a father who served in the Army and a mother who was in the Air Force, Rodriguez moved many times. Stone said he always knew where he'd end up: in the military. And though he confessed in phone calls with Stone to daydreaming about hiking in the Smokies or fishing in the Holston River in East Tennessee, he told his mother he believed in what he was doing in Iraq.

Michael Vaughan (Sergeant, 20, Otis, Ore.): Last month when he was home in Otis, Ore., on leave from Iraq, Vaughan said that he didn't want to return. "He had seen enough," his father, George Vaughan, told The Oregonian. "He wanted to come home and go to school." "He said it was crazy, more or less," said [friend] Jesse Branum. "He said he saw a lot of things that you wouldn't believe, was how he put it."

The toll of the loss to Fort Bragg and the state can't be measured in dollars and cents. But it's part of the escalating impact of war on North Carolina, even as state leaders try to expand the state's dependence on military dollars.