Marine Gunnery Sgt. Jeffrey E. Bohr Jr.

Died April 10, 2003 Serving During Operation Iraqi Freedom

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39, of Ossian, Iowa; assigned to 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, Camp Pendleton, Calif.; killed April 10 in northern Baghdad while engaging enemy forces.

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Growing up in the tiny farm town of Ossian, Iowa, Jeffrey Bohr was a quiet kid who liked horses, enjoyed hunting and fishing, and did a little calf roping.

Later, as an Army Ranger and then a Marine, he parachuted into Grenada, helped oust Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, served in the Gulf War and trained for urban combat by rappelling out of helicopters and learning to float with his hands and feet tied.

Bohr, 39, died April 10 in a seven-hour gun battle in front of a Baghdad mosque. His wife, Lori, also a native Iowan, learned of his death from Marine officials as she was driving from California to Iowa to visit their parents. The couple had no children.

“I was proud of Jeff his whole life,” said his father, Edward Bohr, who lives in Ossian. “He was part of an anti-terrorist group and went through intense training. They even sent him to Colorado to learn to ski. When he came home on leave, he’d get up early in the morning and run 10 miles.”

His brother, Richard, who is in the Army Reserves and is scheduled to deploy to the Persian Gulf in May, hopes to visit the spot where Bohr died and erect a plaque.

Before leaving for the Middle East, Jeffrey Bohr chastised his father for being skeptical about sending troops to Iraq. “He said, ‘You don’t know as much about it as I do. We need to go there.’ He was ready to go. He was doing what he was good at.”

— USA Today, Associated Press