Marine 2nd Lt. Paul M. Felsberg

Died October 13, 2004 Serving During Operation Iraqi Freedom

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27, of West Palm Beach, Fla.; assigned to 2nd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force of Camp Pendleton, Calif.; killed Oct. 13 by enemy action in Anbar province, Iraq.

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Florida Marine killed in Iraq

Associated Press

BOYNTON BEACH, Fla. — A Marine officer who volunteered to replace a fellow lieutenant who was killed in Iraq has himself now been killed, officials said.

Second Lt. Paul M. Felsberg, 27, of West Palm Beach, died Wednesday from injuries received from enemy action in Iraq’s Anbar province, according to officials at Camp Pendleton. His family was told he died on the way to the hospital.

Felsberg went to boot camp after graduating from John I. Leonard High School, and then majored in criminal justice at Florida International University, where he graduated with honors.

He was completing school when he answered a call for volunteers to replace a lieutenant killed in Iraq.

“I told him he was crazy,” his mother, Arlene Felsberg, told The Palm Beach Post. “He said, ‘This is what I signed up to do, this is what I trained to do, and that’s what I do.”’

He arrived Sept. 2 in Iraq, which he described in an e-mail as “kind of like the wild west.” Meanwhile, his mother feared that he would be killed or return home maimed.

“Now,” she sobbed, “I’d take him in as many pieces as I could have had him.”

Felsberg was a platoon commander assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, at Camp Pendleton, Calif. He was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal and the National Defense Service Medal.