Marine Lance Cpl. Allan Klein

Died January 26, 2005 Serving During Operation Iraqi Freedom

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34, of Clinton Township, Mich.; assigned to 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division, III Marine Expeditionary Force, Marine Corps Base Hawaii; killed Jan. 26 when the CH-53E helicopter in which he was riding crashed near Rutbah, Iraq. Twenty-nine Marines and one sailor also were killed.

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Clinton Township Marine killed in Iraq chopper crash

Associated Press

CLINTON TOWNSHIP, Mich. — A 34-year-old Marine from Macomb County was one of 31 U.S military personnel killed in the crash of a helicopter during a sandstorm in Iraq, the Pentagon says.

He was identified as Lance Cpl. Allan Klein, 34, of Clinton Township, north of Detroit.

As of Thursday, at least 1,418 members of the U.S. military had died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. Those killed included 40 service members from Michigan or with known Michigan ties.

News of the Klein’s death came Thursday night, hours after family and friends welcomed home members of a Michigan National Guard unit who had been serving in Iraq. The 1440th Engineer Detachment-Firefighters are based at Camp Grayling.

Forty-eight members of the unit were sent to Fort McCoy, Wis., in 2003 before deployment to Iraq.

Klein was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division, III Marine Expeditionary Force from Marine Corps Base Hawaii, the Pentagon said.

Wednesday’s crash killed 30 Marines and a Navy medic.

The CH-53E Super Stallion went down in western Iraq while transporting troops for security operations in preparation for Sunday’s elections.

Pentagon officials said Thursday they had no further information about the ongoing investigation of the crash, which happened during a desert sandstorm near the border with Jordan.

Gen. John Abizaid, the top commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, said Wednesday that there was no early indication of hostile fire.

The crash was the single deadliest event for the American military in Iraq since the United States invaded that country in March 2003. It was also the largest number of Marines to die in a single event since the terrorist bombing of a Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, in October 1983.

Before this week, 15 Marines from the same 900-member unit had been killed since the March 2003 start of the war in Iraq. Those included eight Marines who were killed Oct. 30 when a car bomb exploded near their patrol outside Fallujah.

“The unit left Hawaii in August for a routine deployment to Okinawa to serve as the ground combat element ... with the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit,” the Marine base said in a news release. In September, the units were sent on to Iraq.

— Associated Press

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Iraqi’s gift comforts family of slain Marine

ROSEVILLE, Mich. — Rae Oldaugh says she cried upon being told her son, Lance Cpl. Allan Klein had been killed in a helicopter crash in Iraq, and again when an Iraqi immigrant offered his banquet hall for a free funeral luncheon.

Allan Klein, 34, of Macomb County’s Clinton Township, was one of 31 U.S. service members killed in the Jan. 26 helicopter crash. They were part of a team providing security in the days before Iraq’s first free election in decades.

Youil “Louie” Ishmail, owner of the Athena Banquet Center in Roseville, was among the Iraqi-Americans who voted Sunday in that election. At 46, Ishmail for the first time had freely voted in an election in the land of his birth.

Oldaugh called him the next day to book the hall for a luncheon following Klein’s funeral, scheduled for 11 a.m. Friday at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church.

When Ishmail learned that Oldaugh’s son had died in Iraq, he immediately offered to provide the hall and a meal for 230 people at no cost.

“This Marine give his life for me to go and vote,” Ishmail told the Detroit Free Press for a Friday story. “This is the least I can give this lady, just to give her some comfort.

“I tell her, ‘Everything. I will take care of everything. It doesn’t matter how many come.”’

Oldaugh was still marveling at Ishmail’s gesture Thursday.

“I was absolutely stunned when he said that to me,” she said. “It’s terribly ironic and significant to me that he did that.”

The value of the luncheon is about $3,000. But, Ishmail said, “It’s not the money.” Providing the luncheon, he said, was “the least I could do” for the family of a man who gave his life trying to bring freedom to Iraq.

“I want to tell those soldiers, those heroes, thank you for your sacrifice,” Ishmail told The Macomb Daily of Mount Clemens.

Ishmail came to the United States in 1979 from Baghdad, where he had been studying management and economics at Baghdad University. He grew up in Mosul after his family — members of a Christian minority long hounded by Saddam Hussein’s ruling Baath Party — was forced from their village in northern Iraq.

Ishmail, his wife Shamrain, his parents and his brother and sister-in-law traveled Sunday with a busload of Iraqis from Assyrian (Catholic) Church of the East in Warren to Southgate, where they voted in the Iraqi election.

“It was a dream come true for us to be able to vote,” said Ishmail, a U.S. citizen since 1991. “My family and I were so excited. I could see it in the eyes of my parents.”

— Associated Press

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Burial dispute over Mich. Marine could soon end

MOUNT CLEMENS, Mich. — One year after his death in Iraq, Marine Lance Cpl. Allan Klein soon could be buried, now that his parents tentatively have ended a long dispute over the location.

The 34-year-old resident of Macomb County’s Clinton Township died Jan. 26, 2005, along with 29 other Marine infantrymen and a medic, in a helicopter crash near the Jordanian border. His remains are being temporarily kept at the Roseville crypt while the legal dispute is pending.

Mother Rae Oldaugh of Roseville wanted him buried in the Great Lakes National Cemetery in Holly, while father Manfred Klein of Monroe County said he should be buried near a family farm in Croswell, north of Port Huron.

The parents tentatively agreed to bury the Marine on “a mutually agreed-upon plot of land which is a place that both parties know Allan loved,” according to a joint statement reported by The Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press.

The statement did not reveal the plot’s location.

“At this point, I won’t say anything beyond the press release,” said the father’s lawyer, Derek Wilczynski.

A Defense Department rule gives the older of two parents of an unmarried service member the power to choose the burial site. But Allan Klein had designated Oldaugh, the younger of his parents, as next of kin. She filed suit in Macomb County Circuit Court, saying she had the right to select the burial site.

“The object has always been to do what Allan would have wanted,” Oldaugh said Wednesday. “This does seem to be something that he might agree to or might really want, or at least wouldn’t object to.”

Earlier, Oldaugh’s lawyer and brother, Dan Shemke, had proposed that the Marine be cremated and have his ashes spread at the Klein family farm, about 4 miles from the Croswell cemetery. Then, Oldaugh could have arranged for a memorial stone at the national cemetery.

Manfred Klein said last year that his son never specifically talked about what should happen if he died but did tell friends that he wanted to settle in the Croswell area.

“He loved that area. His grandmother had a farm there and he spent a lot of time up there,” the father said.

Judge Diane Druzinski retains jurisdiction over the case, which had been scheduled for action next Tuesday. If the deal breaks down, a trial could start April 4.

— Associated Press