Army Sgt. 1st Class James S. Moudy

Died December 11, 2005 Serving During Operation Iraqi Freedom

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37, of Newark, Del.; assigned to the 1st Squadron, 71st Cavalry, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, Fort Drum, N.Y.; killed Dec. 11 when an improvised explosive device detonated near his Humvee during combat operations in Baghdad.

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Funeral held for soldier killed in Iraq

By Randall Chase

Associated Press

NEWARK, Del. — With laughter and tears, friends and family paid their final respects Wednesday to a Delaware solider killed in Iraq.

Army Sgt. 1st Class James “Shawn” Moudy, 37, was remembered as an earnest but fun-loving man who even as a child longed to be a soldier, and who believed strongly in the ideals of liberty and freedom.

“Shawn wanted to be in the military so bad, his whole life,” said his cousin Denise Beattie.

Beattie recalled how as a child, Moudy could be found staging battles with toy soldiers and building forts for his make-believe troops.

“I think my sister-in-law and I lost several dolls each as collateral damage during his battles,” she joked.

Steve Engebretsen recalled soldiers and battles being the favorite subjects of his friend’s doodling, but also said Moudy would have agreed that weapons of war cannot themselves ensure preservation of the liberty in which he so strongly believed.

“Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, every where,” Engebretsen said, quoting from an 1858 speech by Abraham Lincoln. “Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.”

Moudy, a member of the 71st Calvary Regiment of the 10th Mountain Division, based at Fort Drum, N.Y., died Dec. 11 in Baghdad when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.

“As we all know, freedom is not free,” said Tom Robinson, one of several mourners who spoke during Wednesday’s memorial service at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Newark. “... His goal was to see the Iraqi people live free.”

Moudy joined the Army after graduating from Tatnall School in Wilmington, where he played football and was a goalkeeper for the school’s first lacrosse squad, and attending Marion Military Institute in Alabama for a year.

After earning a nomination to the Coast Guard Academy, the young Moudy, an avid outdoorsman, opted instead for the Army and the life of a noncommissioned infantry officer.

“He had many options available, but he chose the military,” said cousin Rich Beattie.

More than 200 people attended the memorial service, including U.S. Sens. Thomas Carper and Joseph Biden Jr., U.S. Rep. Michael Castle, and U.S. District Court Judge Kent Jordan. Jordan is working with the members of Delaware’s congressional delegation in an effort to expedite the citizenship process for Moudy’s Korean-born widow, Myong.

Before the memorial service, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Freakley, commander of the 10th Mountain Division, presented Moudy’s family with two posthumous awards, the Bronze Star and Purple Heart.

A brief graveside service was held at Ebenezer Methodist Church Cemetery, where a cold wind blew across the rolling fields as the echoes of a 21-gun salute and the final strains of “Taps” from a bugler faded into the leaden sky.

Freakley then knelt and presented Moudy’s widow with a folded American flag as his tearful parents, Thelma and James Moudy, looked on. Myong Moudy stroked the hand of her 13-year-old daughter, Sandra, as it rested on the flag.

As mourners gathered around the family to whisper words of encouragement and thanks, young Sandra Moudy stood and walked to the urn bearing her father’s ashes and gently placed next to it a bouquet of flowers that read simply, “Daddy.”