A violent month hits home

WELLSBORO, PA. —  Four were teenagers. Thirty were 21 or younger. The oldest was 53. They left homes in big cities and small prairie towns and Southern hamlets to answer the call of duty in Iraq, where 103 soldiers, Marines, airmen and seamen died in October -- the war’s fourth-deadliest month and the worst since January 2005.

On the final day of October, Sgt. 1st Class Tony L. Knier, who needed his mother’s permission to join the Army at 16, returned in a casket to the coarse green hills of central Pennsylvania. His mother was there, and his widow, and dozens of relatives and friends, and stooped veterans who whispered words of comfort in his widow’s ear.

The casket was closed. Knier, 31, was killed Oct. 21 by a roadside bomb that fractured his skull. On a day when the American death toll in Iraq stood at 2,813, a few of the mourners came right out and said it: They weren’t sure he died for a good cause. But all agreed on what serving in Iraq meant to Tony.

His widow, Bobbi Knier, who first met Tony when she was a 16-year-old cheerleader, said her husband “wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else.” She spoke without tears. “My husband,” she said. “He’s awesome. He’s Army.”

Among the veterans who counseled Bobbi Knier was Fred Audinwood, 78, a Korean War veteran who lost his older brother in World War II. When he approaches bereaved families now, Audinwood said, he acknowledges that “this war is not understood well.”

“My country ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty,” he said. “This death thing is a price we have to pay.”

The price has been paid each month since the war began in March 2003. This October was worse than most, the Pentagon said, in part because American troops have been diverted to Baghdad, where Iraqi security forces have failed to control sectarian violence.

Most of October also coincided with Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, a time when insurgents in recent years have tried to intensify attacks. The October total could increase. The Pentagon sometimes delays announcing combat deaths.

There were scenes of finality this week in many towns, where the turned cemetery dirt was still fresh, or where burial ceremonies were being planned inside funeral homes.

In Aurora, Ill., on Monday, American flags held by volunteers snapped in a brisk wind outside San Pablo Lutheran Church as mourners said farewell to Marine sniper Edwardo “Eddy” J. Lopez, 21. Lopez, a lance corporal, had survived duty in Afghanistan but was killed Oct. 19 during combat in the insurgent stronghold of Al Anbar province.

Before he left for Iraq, Lopez had come to the church of his childhood to hear one final service. Afterward, he sought out the Rev. Alex Merlo and asked for his blessing.

“He said: ‘If something happens to me, if I die in war, take me back to our church. Make sure I get home,’ ” Merlo recalled.

The reverend kept his promise. Lopez was back at San Pablo on Monday, inside a flag-draped casket.

In Portland, Ore., a bugler sounded taps and uniformed men fired rifles into the crisp air Monday to honor Staff Sgt. Ronald L. Paulson. A civil affairs officer and Army Reservist, Paulson was killed Oct. 17 by a roadside bomb. He was 53, the oldest American to die in Iraq in October. At Willamette National Cemetery on a hill high above the city, his widow, Beverly Paulson, accepted a folded Stars and Stripes as bagpipes sounded.

Before being recalled to active duty in December 2005, Paulson had spent 14 years working at Gunderson Inc., a company that makes rail cars and barges.

In Apex, N.C., the family of Army Maj. David G. Taylor Jr. filed into a red-brick funeral home Tuesday to plan his services, scheduled for Thursday. Taylor, 37, was the highest-ranking serviceman to die in October. He was killed when a roadside bomb exploded next to his Humvee in Baghdad on Oct. 22 as he trained new arrivals.

Taylor was able to take mid-tour leave to be present when his wife, Michelle, gave birth to the couple’s first child, Jacob, now 4 months old. His family asked well-wishers, in lieu of flowers, to thank a soldier, police officer or firefighter for service to the country.

In Rancho Cucamonga, the death of Army Capt. Mark C. Paine left his mother deeply conflicted. Paine, 32, died when a roadside bomb was detonated next to his Humvee on Oct. 15 near Taji, north of Baghdad.

“Am I proud?” Kairyn Paine, 56, asked with a weary sigh. “Yes, of course, but what does this say about our strategy over there?”

Once a staunch supporter of President Bush, Paine said she had undergone “a complete change of heart as I’ve watched the failed strategy unfold.”

Mark Paine was troubled by the way the war has divided the country, she said, but he never questioned his commander-in-chief’s strategy.

Roger Paine, 63, called his son a warrior who “died doing exactly what he wanted to do.”

Paine left a hospital -- where he had been recuperating from a concussion caused by a roadside bomb -- to join his unit when he heard the soldiers were engaged in intense fighting, his mother said. He was one of 10 officers and one of 10 Californians to die in October.

In Michigan, the governor ordered all flags in the state lowered to half-staff today to honor two Michigan Marines. Lance Cpl. Nicholas J. Manoukian, 22, and Lance Cpl. Clifford R. Collinsworth, 20, were killed Oct. 21 when their Humvee struck a roadside bomb.

As casualties mounted in October, Collinsworth’s family grew apprehensive. “We worried and we worried and then it happened,” said his aunt, Debbie Ellis. “You can’t believe it until it happens to you.”

The month’s first casualty was Sgt. Denise A. Lannaman, 46, a New York National Guard soldier assigned to a transportation company. Lannaman, the only woman among the October casualties, died from a “non-combat related incident” at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, the Pentagon said. Anyone killed in the theater of military operations is included in the monthly Iraq death toll.

Most of the October casualties were Army. One-quarter were Marines. There were three airmen and two sailors. Each individual death dealt a blow to family and friends.

Sense of loss

The faithful who gathered at San Pablo Lutheran Church in Aurora to say goodbye to Lopez, the Marine sniper, were stunned and overpowered by a sense of loss.

Lopez’s parents were joined in the rough-hewn pews by scores of uncles, aunts and cousins. Childhood buddies and high school teachers were there. So were shopkeepers and long-ago neighbors, a town librarian and Illinois’ lieutenant governor.

Merlo and the Rev. Michael Sneath, a Navy chaplain, conducted the service in English and Spanish.

“This was a young man who really loved his country, who wanted to be a soldier all his life,” Merlo told the mourners. “Now that he is gone, how do we live our life? How do we go on?”

After the service, a milelong caravan of mourners slowly made its way to St. Paul Lutheran Cemetery in nearby Montgomery, Ill., about an hour west of Chicago. Gathered under a blue sunshade, family members clung to one another. Nearby, the military had laid out an M-16, a helmet and dog tags.

Merlo began a prayer for Lopez. Halfway through, his voice broke. He swallowed. His hands, holding a Bible, began to shake. It took him a minute to resume.

Martha Lopez, Eddy’s mother, sat on a folding chair. Tears flowed down her pale face. As a Marine honor guard raised its seven rifles and fired three volleys, the mother’s silence broke.

Lunging to her feet, she stumbled to the closed casket and smothered it with kisses.

“I miss you, papi!” she wailed, resting her head on the casket lid. “I miss you so much already! I miss you!”

Family members rushed to her, gently pried her hands from the casket and slowly walked her back to her seat.

Son was gone

Betty Tidwell stood near her son’s flag-draped casket inside a funeral home in Pennsylvania and recalled his campaign to join the Army Reserves at age 16.

Tony Knier tried several times to persuade her to sign a release. She finally relented, but only after asking for a promise from the recruiter that her son would not be hurt. The recruiter said he could not promise anything. But he would try.

On Oct. 21, Tidwell received the call that her son was gone. “I must have fallen down,” she said, “because my husband picked me up.”

The war that claimed her son means different things to the people who loved him.

Knier’s brother, Richard, 33, wants to stay the course.

“Now that we’re there, we’ve got to finish what we started,” he said.

Tony’s uncle and godfather, John Knier, 69, said Tony “did what he had to do. He figured he was doing it for himself and for the whole country.” He grimaced, and then went on: “I feel bitter toward the war. We’re not going to gain nothing out of it. It means nothing.”

Tony’s close friend, Brett May, 31, said, “There’s no justification at all.”

Bobbi is struggling to explain Tony’s death to their three children. Kayli, 2, is too young to understand. On Tuesday, she picked up her aunt’s cellphone and engaged in a cheerful, imaginary conversation with her father.

Dakoda, 6, asked his mother the night before the funeral: “Why did Daddy have to die?”

Bobbi said she answered: “Honey, you know, Mommy doesn’t know. But God does have a plan for us all.”

Marcus, 8, had told his mother that he was angry with her and his father for saying that Tony would be just fine in Iraq.

“Mommy lied to me,” he told his mother. “Daddy lied to me.”

But the next day, at his father’s funeral, Marcus told a reporter: “Put this in the paper: My dad will never be forgotten.”

*

ellen.barry@latimes.com

david.zucchino@latimes.com

p.j.huffstutter@latimes.com

Barry reported from Pennsylvania, Zucchino from North Carolina and Huffstutter from Illinois. Times staff writers Lynn Marshall in Oregon, and Tony Perry and Joel Rubin in California contributed to this report.