Marine Lance Cpl. Adam J. Crumpler

Died June 18, 2005 Serving During Operation Iraqi Freedom

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19, of Charleston, W.Va.; assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C.; killed June 18 by small-arms fire while conducting combat operations against enemy forces during Operation Spear in Karabilah, Iraq.

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Fallen Marine joined military to emulate grandfather

Associated Press

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A Marine from West Virginia who was shot to death during combat in Iraq joined the military because he wanted to follow in the footsteps of the grandfather who raised him, his sister says.

Lance Cpl. Adam J. Crumpler, 19, of Campbell’s Creek, died Saturday after being hit by small-arms fire during Operation Spear in Karabilah, Iraq, the Pentagon said Monday. The dusty town is about 200 miles west of Baghdad and near Qaim, on the Syrian border, where the U.S. military launched Operation Spear on Friday to destroy militant networks that may filter across the porous national line.

Marines reported finding a weapons cache in Karabilah early Monday, including two dozen RPG launchers, heavy machine guns and equipment to make up to 25 bombs.

On the day he was killed, Marines from his battalion rescued four Iraqi men from an insurgent torture chamber in the basement of a building where they had been beaten, blindfolded and cuffed to a wall during three weeks of captivity, according to the Marine Corps News. Manuals, books and DVDs dealing with hostage-taking, beheadings and other insurgency tactics were found in the building and a car-bomb factory was found in an adjacent structure, according to the Marine Corps News.

Crumpler, a rifleman, joined the Marine Corps in December 2003, a Camp Lejeune spokesman said. He was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Lejeune.

Crumpler signed up for the Marine Corps before he graduated from Riverside High School in 2003, said his sister, Brittany Crumpler, a law student at West Virginia University.

“He always said he was going to go into the Marines,” she said. “He looked up to Grandpop being a Marine in World War II.

“He wrote in a letter that I got yesterday that he only had a few more missions to live through” before he could come home, Crumpler said.

“He was a very good boy and was so full of life and loved what he was doing so much. It’s hard to believe he had to lose his life for it.”

Crumpler said she and her brother were raised by their grandparents, Hubert Robert Johnson and Emma Stone Johnson. Hubert Johnson died in December.