Marine Cpl. George J. Payton

Died November 14, 2004 Serving During Operation Iraqi Freedom

---

20, of Culver City, Calif.; assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, Camp Pendleton, Calif.; killed Nov. 14 by enemy action in Anbar province, Iraq.

---

Camp Pendleton Marine killed in Iraq

Associated Press

CULVER CITY, Calif. — George J. Payton was sent to live with relatives in Fiji during high school because his mother worried about the influence of gangs in their Los Angeles neighborhood.

A year later, he returned focused and mature, joining the Marines in 2002.

“He was getting around to becoming the kind of man I wanted him to be,” said his mother, Chandra, a literacy coach. “He was my confidante, my support, my right hand.”

Payton died Nov. 14 of combat wounds suffered in Iraq’s volatile Anbar province, where Marines led a recent offensive against insurgents in Fallujah. The 20-year-old team leader was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force based at Camp Pendleton.

Military officials told his mother that Payton was shot and hit with a grenade as he led troops through the door of an apartment in a combat zone. He died at a military hospital eight hours later.

Born in Scranton, Pa., Payton lived in Culver City, attending school and helping his mother care for his three younger brothers.

Payton was near the end of his second tour in Iraq. In one of his last letters home, he told his mother not to send any more care packages.

“He wrote that he had a strange feeling that something would happen to him, that he’d probably come home before December,” his mother said. “I thought maybe so, but I thought he’d come home alive.”

In addition to his mother, Payton is survived by brothers Geoffrey, 17, Albert, 8, and Anand, 6.

A memorial service was held Nov. 24 at Holy Cross Mortuary in Culver City. His ashes were spread at sea.