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- The People Behind The Sacrifice
Marine Lance Cpl. Roger W. Deeds
Died November 16, 2005 Serving During Operation Iraqi Freedom
24, of Biloxi, Miss.; assigned to Battalion Landing Team 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif.; attached to 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward); killed Nov. 16 by enemy small arms fire while conducting combat operations against enemy forces during Operation Steel Curtain in Ubaydi, Iraq.
Marine from Biloxi remembered as loving father
Associated Press
BILOXI, Miss. — At his funeral Saturday at Biloxi National Cemetery, Marine Lance Cpl. Roger W. Deeds was remembered as a loving father who is counted among America’s heroes.
Deeds, 24, of Biloxi died Nov. 16 in Ubaydi, Iraq, while battling insurgents. He and three other Marines died in an exchange of small-arms fire from insurgents.
As Marines carrying the casket of Deeds rose their hands to salute, Deeds’ 16-month-old son, Alaric, gently said: “da-da.”
Deeds’ wife, Sarah, had said she met her husband while they were students at Biloxi High School, where Deeds graduated in 2000.
She said Deeds was hurt during his first tour when his convoy was hit by a roadside bomb. She said he stayed in Iraq to recuperate from his wounds.
Sarah said he came home in October 2004 to see Alaric for the first time; the baby had been born in July 2004, a month after Deeds first left for Iraq. A second son, Mikaleigh, was born in September, two months after Deeds returned to Iraq.
According to The Free Press of Mankato (Minn.), Deeds moved with his mother and siblings from Germany to Truman, Minn. — his mother’s home town — in the early 1990s. Deeds attended school in Truman from third grade through eighth grade, the newspaper said.
At age 14, he went to live with his father and attended school in New Mexico. He later moved to Biloxi.
Deeds was the second soldier from a Mississippi community devastated by Hurricane Katrina to be killed in Iraq since the storm slammed into the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29.
First Lt. Robert C. Oneto-Sikorski, 33, of Bay St. Louis was on a foot patrol in an area west of Baghdad when he was killed on Oct. 31.