Army Pvt. 2 Jason L. Deibler

Died May 4, 2003 Serving During Operation Iraqi Freedom

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20, of Coeburn, Va.; assigned to 1st Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment, Smith Barracks, Baumholder, Germany; killed in Kuwait by a non-combat weapon discharge.

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Jason L. Deibler joined the Army in October after completing a clerical occupational program at the Flatwoods Job Corps Center, a vocational training center in southwest Virginia. He was studying to go into computers.

“He was likable, a very personable young man,” said Sheila Pinkston, a counselor at the center. “A lot of us remember him.” Pinkston said he was a native of Anchorage, Alaska, and had come to the center from Hampton, where he still had relatives.

Deibler was killed May 4 at Camp New Jersey in Kuwait in an accidental shooting. “He was so proud to be in the Army,” his father, Kevin Deibler, said. “We heard from him when he was in Germany, and he was more happy than he had ever been in his life. The one saving grace is that it happened when he was at the happiest point in his life.”

Deibler’s fiancee, Nicole Reddington of Hampton, said she will always remember him as a loving, caring young man. She said she cherishes the photograph of the two of them watching dolphins off Virginia Beach.

“He loved his family very much, and he always wanted me to be included in his family,” Reddington, 20, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “I know he loved me very much. He told me that I was his first real love.”

Jason Pugh, 22, of Woodbridge, spent about five months with Deibler at Flatwoods, a vocational training center for 232 at-risk students on 70 acres in southwest Virginia. He hadn’t heard from his friend since Deibler joined the Army in October, but said Deibler couldn’t wait to get going.

“He was always very enthusiastic about the military,” Pugh said, adding that he wouldn’t have been surprised if Deibler became a “lifer” in the Army. “To him it just seemed like a big, exciting adventure. He was looking to be a part of the Army and he wanted to travel. He wanted that respect, to be a part of that Army machine.”

Kevin Deibler called his son’s death “very, very hard.”

“Everybody’s in a state of shock, and there are a lot of tears,” Deibler said. “Jason was the most loving person you’d ever want to meet in your life. He loved his family more than anything in the world, and he loved to be with his family more than anything in the whole world.”

— Associated Press