Army Sgt. Kurt D. Schamberg

Died May 20, 2005 Serving During Operation Iraqi Freedom

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26, of Euclid, Ohio; assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, Fort Drum, N.Y.; killed May 20 when an improvised explosive device detonated near his Humvee in Baghdad.

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Ohio soldier dies in Iraq blast

Associated Press

GILLETTE, Wyo. — The mother of a soldier killed by a roadside blast in Iraq said her son had only three weeks left on his second tour and had planned to visit Wyoming, where he loved to four-wheel in the mountains.

Sgt. Kurt Schamberg, 26, died last Thursday near the Abu Ghraib prison. He had been injured once before in the leg.

“The hours. I was counting the hours,” his mother, Pam Lindsay, of Gillette, said. “We had that close call and we really felt the opportunity had knocked and he had escaped.”

Lindsay had thought it would only be a matter of weeks before her son would be in the Big Horn Mountains, covering acre after acre of forest on a four-wheeler. They had planned the trip months ago, long before Schamberg left in January for his second tour in Iraq.

When he returned, he wanted to visit his brother in Denver. Then he was going to come to Gillette and visit the mountains he fell in love with during several previous visits to Wyoming.

He has spent a summer in Gillette working as a lifeguard at the Campbell County pool and living with his aunt, Cindy Schamberg.

He even had talked about buying property and moving to northeast Wyoming when his obligation to the Army ended in April 2006, his mother said.

Schamberg, 26, was born and raised in Orwell, Ohio, and enlisted in the Army in April 2003. He was awarded the Purple Heart on April 12 for his leg injury.

He believed in the Army’s mission in Iraq, even though two weeks earlier two others in his squad were killed, said Lindsay, who learned of her son’s death on Friday.

“I would have supported him anyway,” she said.