Robert Allen Wise - Specialist, United States Army

No. 847-03
IMMEDIATE RELEASE

DoD Identifies Army Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Specialist Robert A. Wise, 21, of Tallahassee, Florida, was killed on November 12, 2003, in Baghdad, Iraq. Wise was on a mounted patrol when an improvised explosive device exploded.

Wise was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 124th Infantry Regiment, 53rd Infantry Brigade, Florida National Guard, Tallahassee, Florida.

The incident is under investigation.

FLORIDA WAR CASUALTY
Family, military honor GI at Arlington
A victim of the war in Iraq — an infantryman from the Florida National Guard — is laid to rest in Arlington cemetery.

Florida National Guard Specialist Robert Allen Wise was laid to rest beneath towering oak trees on a chilly, windswept hill in Arlington National Cemetery on Monday.

Wise, 21, of Tallahassee, a machine gunner in the 3rd Battalion, 124th Infantry, became the first Florida National Guard soldier killed in action to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

The man with an infectious smile and an indomitable spirit died in Baghdad Nov. 12 of shrapnel wounds to the head when someone detonated a 155mm mortar shell planted on the road traveled by his Humvee.

After a white-gloved honor guard folded the flag that had draped his casket and delivered it to Wise's parents, the sharp crack of the rifle salute and the soft strains of taps drifted among the thousands of glistening headstones and about 75 mourners.

Then, one by one, members of Wise's family approached the brown mahogany casket for private goodbyes.

First came his mother, Tammy Wise, of Tallahassee. She stepped to the casket, bowed her head and stood for several moments.

Marie Hildinger, Wise's sister, also of Tallahassee, saluted.

Finally came his father, David Wise, of Summerland Key, who stood at the head of the casket, his gaze fixed for a long, final moment.

A crisp fall wind rustled through what was left of the golden and brown leaves of a towering pin oak tree a few yards from the grave. From the hillside on this sunny day, the Wise family could see the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial and the Pentagon.

”Robert's loss is the hardest thing I believe I will ever have to face,” Tammy Wise said in a statement after the funeral. `He was so full of life and promise and now that life and promise is gone. I know I will never see him again, hold him, hug him, hear his laugh and see that beautiful smile.”

The crack of rifles and the sound of taps from another nearby funeral filled the air during the brief 11 a.m. service. The cemetery is burying about 27 a day, mostly from the World War II era.

Wise was only the 40th person to be buried in the new section for soldiers killed in Iraq, cemetery officials said. He was eligible for burial in Arlington because he died on active duty.

To Chaplain Major Ronald Leggett fell the task of delivering to the family the American flag from atop the coffin — and with it those words of ominous finality.

”This flag is presented on behalf of a grateful nation as a token of our appreciation for the honorable and faithful service rendered by your loved one,” Leggett said handing the tri-folded flag to Wise's parents.

”It is humbling and sobering to come here,” said General Douglas Burnett, Florida National Guard commander.

”These are the best and brightest of our young people,” Burnett said. “We ask them to do tough jobs and they do them so magnificently, so miraculously.”

Wise was the 18th person from Florida — active duty, Reserve or National Guard — to be killed since the United States began bombing Afghanistan in 2001, then invaded Iraq in March.

Wise was born in Key West, where he lived until junior high school, then moved with his mother to Tallahassee. There, at Godby High School, Wise got his first taste of military life in the Air Force Junior ROTC. He also worked for causes ranging from soup kitchens to the March of Dimes.

After graduation from high school, Wise enrolled in Tallahassee Community College and worked full time for an electrical supply firm in Leon County. He wanted to become a military recruiter.

‘I Would Rather Face Them There Than Here'
Florida Guardsman Killed by Explosive In Iraq Remembered as Dedicated Soldier

Tammy Wise will never hug her son Robert again. She will never see his smile or hear his laugh, she said yesterday, describing the loss as “very nearly unbearable.”

Specialist Robert A. Wise, a 21-year-old National Guard infantryman from Tallahassee, was killed November 12, 2003, when an explosive was triggered on a Baghdad street, taking down three members of his patrol. Only Wise was killed. He is the third Florida Army National Guard solider to be killed in Iraq since the war began.

Wise was interred yesterday at Arlington National Cemetery, where family and other mourners gathered for the ceremony under a flawless blue sky.

After the service, Tammy Wise said it was her son's conviction about joining the National Guard and his desire to make a difference that has helped her through the grief.

“It is made bearable only by the fact that Robert was serving his country and was performing a duty which he believed in, completely and deeply,” Wise said in a written statement. “I am so very proud of him and I am so very proud to be his mother.”

Wise graduated in 2000 from Tallahassee's Amos P. Godby High School, where he ran cross country and played soccer. In his senior year, he was commander of the ROTC.

Wise completed his basic military training in August 2000. An employee of the Graybar Electric Co., he reported to Fort Stewart, Georgia, in January for active duty. He was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 124th Infantry Regiment, 53rd Infantry Brigade in Tallahassee.

His unit deployed to Kuwait and Iraq in February.

At yesterday's service, the Bronze Star and Purple Heart were awarded posthumously. Flags were presented to both his mother and his father, David Wise. Mourners wept as taps sounded across the cemetery.

The funeral was well attended by members of the Florida media. National Guard officials said Wise's death generated a tremendous amount of interest and support from members of the Florida public. More than 1,000 people attended Wise's memorial service at the Tallahassee armory, and many people sent money to the Wise family to help pay for their travel to Washington for the ceremony at Arlington.

“Anytime we lose a soldier, hearts go out to the family,” said Lieutenant Colonel Ron Tittle, a Florida National Guard spokesman.

“The outpouring of love and support from those who knew Robert and those who didn't has been overwhelming,” Tammy Wise said in her statement. “Robert's life was too short but was well lived. . . . He touched many, many lives — and we are all better for having known him.”

In an interview published last week in the Tallahassee Democrat, Wise's father, David Wise of Key West, said his son's focus on his duty crystallized after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

“He was ready to go then,” Robert Wise told the Democrat. “I remember the phone call when he actually was being sent overseas, [asking,] ‘Son are you sure you want to go?' He said, ‘Dad, I would rather face them there than here.' ”

Spc. Robert Allen Wise, 21, of Tallahassee, became the first Florida National
Guard soldier killed in action to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
He was a machine gunner in the 3rd Battalion, 124th Infantry, serving in Iraq.

An American flag is presented to Tammy Wise, mother of Specialist Robert A.
Wise, 21, of Tallahassee, who is surrounded by Wise's father, David, and Robert Wise's
girlfriend, Jenny Walsh at a graveside service at Arlington National Cemetery.
Wise was killed Nov. 12 by an improvised explosive in Baghdad while on patrol; two colleagues were injured in the attack

Florida National Guard infantryman, killed in Iraq, laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery

Florida National Guard Specialist Robert Allen Wise was laid to rest beneath towering oak trees on a chilly windswept hill in Arlington National Cemetery Monday.

Wise, 21, of Tallahassee, a machine gunner in the Third Battalion of the 124th Infantry, became the first Florida National Guard soldier killed in action to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

The man with an infectious smile and an indomitable spirit died in Baghdad November 12, 2003, of shrapnel wounds to the head when someone detonated a 155mm mortar shell planted on the road traveled by his Humvee.

After a white-gloved honor guard folded the casket flag and delivered it to Wise's parents, the sharp crack of the rifle salute and the soft strains of Taps drifted among the thousands of glistening headstones and about 75 mourners.

Then, one by one, members of Wise's family approached the brown mahogany casket for private goodbyes.

First came his mother, Tammy Wise, of Tallahassee. She stepped to the casket, bowed her head and stood for several moments.

Marie Hildinger, Wise's sister, also of Tallahasse saluted.

Finally came his father, David Wise, of Sumerland Key, who stood at the head of the casket, his gaze fixed for a long, final moment.

The crack of rifles and the sound of taps from another nearby funeral filled the air during the brief 11 a.m. service. The cemetery is burying about 27 a day, mostly from the World War II era.

Wise was only the 40th person to be buried in the new section for soldiers killed in Iraq, cemetery officials said. He was eligible for burial in Arlington because he died while on active duty.

To Chaplain Major Ronald Leggett fell the task of delivering to the family the American flag from atop the coffin — and with it those words of ominous finality.

”It is humbling and sobering to come here,” said General Douglas Burnett, commander of the Florida National Guard.

”These are the best and brightest of our young people,” Burnett said. “We ask them to do tough jobs and they do them so magnificently, so miraculously.”

Wise was the 18th person from Florida — active duty, reserve or National Guard — to be killed since the U.S. began bombing Afghanistan in 2001, then invaded Iraq in March.

Florida GI to be buried at Arlington
The first Florida National Guard soldier killed in combat to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery is remembered in a memorial service in Tallahassee.

With an image of Spc. Robert Wise on a giant screen, his parents, Tammy, second from left, and her former husband David, third from left, grieve during a service.

TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA: Specialist Robert Allen Wise, killed in Iraq last week, will become the first Florida National Guard soldier killed in combat to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery, guard officials said Tuesday.

Wise, 21, was killed November 12, 2003, when someone set off an explosive device 10 feet from his Humvee as it rounded a corner in Baghdad. He was en route to help an ordnance team with a discovery of enemy explosives.

Wise, who spent the first half of his life in the Lower Keys and the second half in Tallahassee, was remembered at a memorial service Tuesday evening as a role model, textbook soldier and friend to anyone no matter their rank in life.

Throughout the nearly two-hour service, a jumbo screen flashed a stream of pictures of a smiling Wise with his family, his fellow soldiers and with Iraqi kids in the streets of Baghdad.

Wise's mother, Tammy Wise, took the podium in front of the symbols of a fallen soldier: inverted rifle, covered helmet, boots and dog tags, each solemnly placed there by fellow soldiers.

”I want to tell all the moms and dads that is OK to be scared,” she told the nearly 800 people who jammed a hot, humid Henry W. McMillan Armory.

”I have lost my son,” she said, but then to the rest of his comrades still in Iraq — 1,900 of them from the Florida National Guard: “but I have gained sons as well.”

She quoted from one of her son's favorite passages, this from Daniel Webster in 1834: “God grants liberty only to those who love it and are always ready to defend it.”

Then she said softly. “These words were what he believed.”

Arlington National Cemetery, which opened in 1864, is the nation's best-known burial ground for veterans and holds the bodies or ashes of about 270,000 veterans, spouses and veterans' children.

But the only other Florida National Guardsman buried there is General Mark Lance, who died in 1966 as the guard's commander.

On Monday, Wise will become the first guardsman buried at Arlington who was killed in combat, Guard Lieutenant Colonel Ron Tittle said.

Wise was attending Florida State University and working at an electrical supply company when he got the call to join his unit — the 3rd Battalion of the 124th Florida National Guard Infantry, based in the Panhandle — for overseas duty.

Grim veterans and high school ROTC cadets from the unit that Wise commanded as a student in 1999 lined the assembly hall. Some of their faces were streaked with tears.

His father, David Wise of Summerland Key, brought the audience to its feet when he stabbed his finger toward heaven and declared: “Boy, you're my hero.”

Wednesday 19 November 2003

Hundreds honor fallen soldier

Lieutenant Governor Toni Jennings speaks at memorial
service Tuesday, November 18, 2003, for Army Specialist Robert
Wise in Tallahassee.

Whenever Specialist Robert Wise would write letters to his mother, he would sign them “Your loving son, Robert Wise.”

So his amused mother, Tammy Wise, asked him once: “How many sons do you think I have named Robert?”

Her son replied, “Only one. But I sign them that way, just in case.”

Tuesday night, nearly 1,000 people turned out to honor the memory of the first Tallahassee soldier killed in the war in Iraq. His name was Robert Wise. Just in case.

Wise was killed on November 12, 2003, when a bomb exploded near the Humvee he was riding in with two other soldiers in Baghdad. Wise, a gunner, died from head trauma caused by the blast. Private First Class Trueman Muhrer-Irwin, also of Tallahassee and the assistant gunner, was injured when shrapnel blew through his left foot. Specialist Matt Moss, who is from Panama City and was the driver, suffered minor injuries.

All three soldiers were members of the Tallahassee-based Alpha Company of the 3rd Battalion, 124th Infantry Regiment of the Florida Army National Guard. Wise was the first casualty of the 130-member company that was deployed to Iraq in February.

Wise was a 2000 graduate of Godby High, where he played soccer, ran cross country and was a Cadet Corps commander in the school's Air Force Junior ROTC program. He was working for a local electric-supply company and attending Tallahassee Community College at the time he was activated.

On Monday, Wise will be buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.

Tuesday's memorial service for Wise, held at the National Guard Armory, was for the Tallahassee community – and it evoked an outpouring of people and emotion.

Every seat in the armory's gymnasium-sized main hall was filled, with dozens of people lining the walls or taking seats in an auxiliary room where the service was broadcast on television. The service drew numerous public officials ranging from Florida Lt. Gov. Toni Jennings to the entire Leon County Commission, which took a recess from its regular Tuesday evening meeting.

But the vast majority of people in attendance were family and friends – or part of Wise's extended family: the wives, children, relatives and friends of fellow Alpha Company members, whose loved ones are still stationed in Iraq.

Family members filled a table with more than 50 framed photographs of Alpha Company members. More than a dozen flower arrangements lined the dais, and a half-dozen photos of Wise occupied a front table.

Personal tributes

Wise's mother, father, sister, fiancee and best friend sat in the front row, where they received a steady stream of hugs, handshakes and heartfelt condolences from Wise's former childhood friends, high-school buddies and military personnel.

“In the back of your mind, you know something like (death) can happen, but you just don't expect it,” said Eric Dennis, a high-school soccer teammate and fellow ROTC cadet. “Mrs. Wise, you did a great job with your son.”

The service was officially a military memorial, and it served up all the requisite military honors.

Wise's boots, rifle, helmet and dog tags were solemnly marched to the front of the room by single soldiers and assembled in the helmet-on-rifle tribute to dead soldiers.

His family was presented with three medals issued to Wise posthumously: the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart and the Florida Cross.

A bugler played taps to close the ceremony.

But the most affecting part of the service was the stream of personal tributes by those who knew – or knew of – Wise. Twenty-two people trooped to the microphone to address the crowd. They talked of his childhood in Key West, where he lived until 1996, and was known as a fun-loving child, who acted in plays and loved movies. They talked of his candor and sense of responsibility as a leader of the Godby ROTC. They marveled at his love of the military and unshakable commitment to serving his country.

Few of them made it all the way through their remembrances without sobbing.

“Of all the people I knew, he was the most passionate,” said a teary Melissa Callaway. “He was a breath of fresh air for my generation.”

‘He became our big brother'

Godby senior Philip Pepper remembered meeting Wise when Pepper was a freshman member of ROTC and forever thought of Wise as “awesome.”

“It's a shame something like this had to happen for me to realize Robert was full of life,” Pepper said. “He was like Forrest Gump, though a little more sensible.”

Spc. Jared Papesh, a fellow ROTC cadet at Godby now with another National Guard unit, remembered how proud Wise was when he enlisted in the National Guard.

“Robert was the kind of soldier I'd like all of us to be,” Papesh said. “Ready to serve, ready to sacrifice everything to defend the freedoms of this country.”

The most moving tributes came from Wise's parents, who each earned standing ovations for sharing memories that earned chuckles – and proud sighs.

David Wise hoped that everyone's main memory of his son would be “the way he made you laugh” and would “reel you in with a smile that was all teeth.” But he admitted to a father's pride in his son's efforts in Iraq.

“Robert always wanted to be a big brother,” David Wise said. “And I think he became our big brother. America was bullied and Robert did what a big brother does: He went to beat up the bully in his own yard.”

Tammy Wise reassured the families of other Alpha Company members: “It's OK to be scared, it's OK to be relieved that our loss was not your loved one.”

And she took pride in the outpouring of gratitude for her son's sacrifice.

“I always knew my son was a great person,” Tammy Wise said. “But I didn't know everyone else knew it, too.

“I love you Robert Wise. Just in case.”

May. 28, 2006:

A soldier's toughest day: delivering painful newsWith training, simple honesty, patience and heavy hearts, these soldiers undertake a dark mission — telling families that a loved one has been killed in action.

TALLAHASSEE. FLORIDA – The knock on Tammy Wise's green wooden door came about 3:30 p.m. November 12, 2003.

Two officers stood outside her second-floor apartment, both in ”Class A” green Army uniforms. One was a chaplain.

Wise had been celebrating her 44th birthday that day, and she had just returned home from a camping trip. She went to her bedroom for a fresh shirt. She took her time, moving hanger by hanger by hanger.

”If I don't go back out there,” she thought, “maybe they'll leave.”

They didn't leave.

She doesn't remember the exact words that Florida National Guard Lieuenant Blake Heidelberg used. But there is a script for these sorts of messages, a simple, to-the-point sentence. For Tammy Wise, it went something like this: “The secretary of the Army has asked me to express his deepest regrets that your son, Robert, was killed in action.”

Since the start of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, that message has been delivered in more or less the same way about 140 times in Florida, and more than 2,700 times nationwide.

It falls to soldiers to carry that news to anxious families — and Heidelberg, an Iraq war veteran, calls November 12, 2003, the toughest day of his military career.

Specialist Robert Wise, a Tallahassee Community College student who also worked for an electrical company and was known for his community service, was killed when a roadside bomb went off near his Humvee in Baghdad. He was 21. He would later be buried in Arlington National Cemetery, the first Florida National Guard soldier killed in combat to be buried there.

Heidelberg, who had met Wise during their service in the Guard, is part of a cadre of about 40 Florida Guard soldiers who have been trained to deliver death notifications.

`PRIORITY MISSION'

Military officials say that such officers are assigned to help a grieving family in all of its dealings with the military.

”This is a priority mission for everybody,” said Jake Umholtz, director of human resources for the Army's Fort Stewart, Georgia.

”This is not something we take lightly,” he said. “The first objective is to put a very qualified individual on the job to go out with the family.”

Training includes discussions with chaplains and with officers who have gone on visits to notify families. There are also written instructions and videos on how to deliver the horrible news. And there are role-playing exercises.

The training is constant — in part because of rapid turnover in the military. Miami will be the scene of a three-day Army training session in July, Umholtz said.

The soldiers who carry out the mission feel a special sense of duty — and an extra measure of difficulty, said Guard Maj. Rich Hall, “because it brings it home that this is real.”

”It drives the nail home that this is serious business,” he said.

At the same time, though, ”you're doing your last act of service for the person who is gone,” Hall said. “Kind of payback for all the years of service they have put in.”

Hall delivered the news to the family of Roy Wood, a University of Miami-trained emergency-room physician from the Fort Myers area. Wood had given up his officer's commission to be deployed with his unit as a medic in Afghanistan. He was killed in a truck wreck in January 2004.

Retired Florida National Guard Sergenat Major John Page, a Vietnam veteran and career military man, has parachuted out of airplanes and led dangerous missions. None was more daunting than the morning he helped Hall tell Wood's family of his death.

”This was the roughest assignment I ever did,” Page said.

`UTMOST RESPECT'

David Wise, Robert Wise's father and Tammy Wise's ex-husband, said that families — despite the pain of the message — appreciate the messengers.

”Utmost respect,” he said of his feelings for the two soldiers who knocked at the door of his house on Summerland Key. They tried their best to ”ease you through that time,” he said. “I could never say enough about the way we were treated. It was unbelievable.”

RECEIVING THE NEWS

Tammy Wise walked back into her living room that day, wearing a red and blue tie-dyed shirt, one of a matching set that she and her son had bought at Universal's Islands of Adventure theme park.

She recalls that Heidelberg gently asked her if she was Tammy Wise.

And she remembers that as he told her the awful news, she felt sympathy for the soldier who stood in front of her.

”God Bless Lt. Heidelberg,” she recalled. “I know I kept looking at him, going: `Are you sure? . . . How do you know it was him? . . . Are you sure? . . . How do you know it was him?'

“He just kept saying, `Yes, ma'am, we're sure. Yes, ma'am, it's him.'

”He was very patient; he was very kind,” said Wise, 46, a legal assistant for the public defender's office in Jefferson County.

Heidelberg remembers his thoughts as he approached her apartment: “How can I present this? How can I be helpful to Mrs. Wise? What can we do for her in this horrible, horrible time?”

Hours later, when it was over and he was driving home in his truck, he remembers weeping.

WISE, ROBERT ALLEN
SPC US ARMY
VETERAN SERVICE DATES: Unknown
DATE OF BIRTH: 08/06/1982
DATE OF DEATH: 11/12/2003
DATE OF INTERMENT: 11/24/2003
BURIED AT: SECTION 60 SITE 8127
ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY

An honor guard carries the casket of Army Specialist Robert Wise during
funeral services at Arlington National Cemetery, Monday, Nov. 24, 2003.
Wise, a member of the Florida National Guard, was killed November 12
when his squad came under attack during a patrol in Baghdad.

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Michael Robert Patterson

Michael Robert Patterson was born in Arlington and is the son of a former officer of the US Army. So it was no wonder that sooner or later his interests drew him to American history and especially to American military history. Many of his articles can be found on renowned portals like the New York Times, Washingtonpost or Wikipedia.

Reviewed by: Michael Howard

Robert Allen Wise – Specialist, United States Army

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