No. 792-03
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Oct 28, 2003
DoD Identifies Army Casualties
The Department of Defense announced today the deaths of two soldiers who were supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Staff Sergeant Jamie L. Huggins, 26, of Hume, Missouri, was killed in action on October 26, 2003, in Baghdad, Iraq. Huggins was on patrol when his vehicle was hit with an improvised explosive device. Huggins was assigned to Company, 2nd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
Sergeant Aubrey D. Bell, 33, of Tuskegee, Alabama, was killed in action on October 27, 2003, in Baghdad, Iraq. Bell was at the Al Bayra Police Station when his unit came under small arms fire and an improvised explosive device detonated at his location. Bell was assigned to the 214th Military Police Company, Alabama National Guard.
These incidents are under investigation.
FORT BRAGG, NORTH CAROLINA:
An 82nd Airborne Division paratrooper from Missouri died Sunday when a roadside bomb blew up near his vehicle in Iraq, the Department of Defense said Tuesday.
Staff Sergeant Jamie L. Huggins, 26, of Hume, Missouri, was on patrol in Baghdad when the vehicle was hit by the bomb.
Huggins was a squad leader assigned to C Company, 2nd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg. He joined the Army in 1997 and deployed to Iraq in March.
A funeral is being planned at Arlington National Cemetery, the 82nd said in a statement. Huggins will receive the Bronze Star and Purple Heart posthumously.
Huggins’ wife, Marissa, and their 9-month-old child live in Fayetteville.
FORT BRAGG, N.C. Staff Sergeant Jamie Huggins left for Iraq with the 82nd Airborne the same week his first child was born in March.
It would be the only time he’d see his daughter, his wife, Marissa Danielle Huggins, told The Fayetteville Observer Tuesday.
Huggins was killed Sunday in Baghdad when his vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb, the Department of Defense said Tuesday. He was a squad leader with Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment. Huggins, a native of Hume, Missouri, was 26.
Marissa Danielle Huggins – who goes by Danielle – said Tuesday that her husband was supposed to return to the United States in November to move to Fort Benning, Georgia. He was going to join the 75th Ranger Regiment.
“I could not have asked for a better husband,” she said. Danielle Huggins said her husband was a family man, dedicated to her and their daughter, Mallory.
He was also proud to be a soldier.
“Part of him wanted to go over to Iraq to help, but part of him didn’t want to leave me and his daughter,” she said.
When she talked to her husband in Iraq, Huggins would ask him why the United States had to be there. She said he told her that U.S. forces were making progress and doing good things.
Huggins joined the Army in May 1997. Danielle Huggins said he joined to earn money for college and see the world.
“He wanted to better himself,” she said.
Huggins earned his Ranger tab in January 2002 and his Combat Infantryman Badge while in Iraq. Heggins was one of two paratroopers killed on Sunday. Private Joseph R. Guerrera, who was 20, died in the same attack.
Huggins will receive the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart posthumously. A memorial service at Arlington National Cemetery is being planned.
Huggins is the 15th paratrooper from the 82nd killed in Iraq. All the paratroopers from the 82nd have been killed since May 1, when President Bush declared the end of major combat operations in Iraq.
Paratrooper ‘Loved the Service’
At Arlington Burial, Family Finds Comfort in Soldier’s Dedication
By Joshua Partlow
Courtesy of the Washington Post
Thursday, November 6, 2003
Mallory Huggins was born the same week in March that her father left to fight in Iraq.
And while Army Staff Sergeant Jamie L. Huggins was serving there with the 82nd Airborne Division, family members say, he wanted nothing more than to get back home to see his baby girl again. He would not get that chance.
The 26-year-old paratrooper was killed on patrol in Baghdad on October 26, 2003, when a roadside bomb exploded. The blast flipped his Humvee and shot shrapnel into Huggins’s chest, relatives said.
Yesterday morning, 7-month-old Mallory sat calmly on her grandmother’s lap among grieving family and friends at Arlington National Cemetery for her father’s burial. Her mother, Danielle, sat to her right, bent over and convulsing with sobs.
Jamie Huggins was laid to rest in a wood coffin at the end of a lengthening row of war fatalities — all but one of them from Iraq.
Thus far, 34 U.S. servicemen killed during Operation Iraqi Freedom have found their final peace amid the gently sloping, meticulously groomed hills of Arlington. Their headstones mark the front line in a grassy field at the cemetery’s southern end — distinguishable from the thousands of similar grave markers behind them only by the fresh flowers left there in recent remembrance.
Major Marvin Luckie, Deputy Division Chaplain for the 82nd Airborne, delivered Huggins’s eulogy: “In life he honored the flag, and in death the flag will honor him,” Luckie said as a soft rain began. “Blessed are the dead.”
Family and friends took comfort that Huggins died doing what he loved — being a soldier. He could have left the military soon, but had recently signed on for four additional years with a Ranger regiment.
“He really loved the service,” said his aunt, Jane Jennings. “That’s about all he talked about, going on and making a career of it.”
Huggins grew up in Worland, Missouri, population 50. He was one of nine seniors in his 1996 graduation class at Hume High School, where he played guard on the basketball team. He hauled hay in his spare time. Like his friends, he enjoyed hunting, fishing for bass in nearby abandoned coal pits and fixing up cars.
“He was an outgoing person, always joking around. He was like the class clown,” said Michael Coffman, 25. One day in high school the two went fishing, and Huggins kept pulling the same perch out of the pond and tossing it back. After about the fourth catch, Coffman said, Huggins grabbed the pesky fish and bit its head off.
“He did crazy stuff like that all the time to make people laugh. . . . He was just a really great guy,” former classmate Amy Rogers said.
Huggins had an ambitious side as well. He wanted to leave his small town, get an education and see something of the world, friends said, so he enlisted in the Army shortly after high school. He spent time in Hawaii and North Carolina before heading to the Middle East.
On Huggins’s last visit to Worland, more than a year ago, Jennings was surprised by the changes she saw in her nephew. He had matured into a confident man, happily married and content with his work. And when it came to his daughter, “he loved her something fierce,” Jennings said.
“He’d grown up a lot. He seemed to know what he wanted from life,” she added. “We are all devastated.”
Huggins was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart.
Danielle Smith Huggins 36, of Orange, Texas, died Friday, May 11, 2007 at St. Elizabeth Hospital in Beaumont, Texas.
Funeral Services will be at 2:00 p.m., Tuesday, May 15, 2007, at Claybar Funeral Home Chapel in Orange, Texas.
Officiating will be Reverend David Morgret of Mauriceville United Methodist Church. Burial will be held in Arlington National Cemetery, Monday, May 21, 2007 at 11:00 a.m.
Visitation will be from 5-9 p.m., Monday, May 14, at Claybar Funeral Home in Orange.
Danielle was born on July 20, 1970, in Orange Texas. She resided in Fayetteville, North Carolina for many years. She is the daughter of Mack Dwight & Dr. Sheila Donnaud Smith.
Danielle was a housewife. She was preceded in death by her husband, Staff Sergeant Jamie L. Huggins, and her grandparents, Evelyn and Luther Smith. She is survived by her parents, Sheila and Mack Smith of Mauriceville; her grandparents, Ray and Sue Donnaud; daughter Mallory Brooke Huggins; her sister and brother-in-Law Meredith and Pat Seay of Orange; and her brother, Micah Dwight Smith also of Orange.
A memorial contribution may be made to the Mallory Huggins Memorial Fund at Orange Savings Bank. 504 North 5th Street Orange, Texas 77630.
Danielle Smith Huggins 36, of Orange, Texas, died Friday, May 11, 2007 at St. Elizabeth Hospital in Beaumont, Texas.
Funeral Services will be at 2:00 p.m., Tuesday, May 15, 2007, at Claybar Funeral Home Chapel in Orange, Texas. Officiating will be Reverend David Morgret of Mauriceville United Methodist Church.
Burial will be held in Arlington National Cemetery, Monday, May 21, 2007 at 11:00 a.m.
Visitation will be from 5-9 p.m., Monday, May 14, at Claybar Funeral Home in Orange, Texas.
Danielle was born on July 20, 1970, in Orange Texas. She resided in Fayetteville, North Carolina for many years. She is the daughter of Mack Dwight & Dr. Sheila Donnaud Smith. Danielle was a housewife.
She was preceded in death by her husband, Staff SergeantJamie L. Huggins, and her grandparents, Evelyn and Luther Smith.
She is survived by her parents, Sheila and Mack Smith of Mauriceville; her grandparents, Ray and Sue Donnaud; daughter Mallory Brooke Huggins; her sister and brother-in-Law Meredith and Pat Seay of Orange; and her brother, Micah Dwight Smith also of Orange.
A memorial contribution may be made to the Mallory Huggins Memorial Fund at Orange Savings Bank.
receives a military funeral in Arlington National Cemetery, Wednesday, November 5, 2003. Family members seated in the front row are, left to right, his widow Danielle Huggins holding their daughter Mallory, Mrs. Huggins mother Sheila Smith, his mother Helen Juggins and father Willard Huggins
as she clutches the folded flag from his casket, during a military funeral at Arlington National Cemetery, Wednesday, November 5, 2003. Their daughter Mallory, at right, was born in March just before Staff Sergeant Huggins
departed to Iraq with the 82nd Airborne Division.
HUGGINS, JAMIE L
- SSGT US ARMY
- DATE OF BIRTH: 10/08/1977
- DATE OF DEATH: 10/26/2003
- BURIED AT: SECTION 60 SITE 7893
- ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY
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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