Marine Lance Cpl. Jacob R. Lugo

Died August 24, 2004 Serving During Operation Iraqi Freedom

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21, of Flower Mound, Texas; assigned to 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, Calif.; killed Aug. 24 by enemy action in Anbar province, Iraq.

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Just before he shipped out to Iraq, Jacob Lugo secretly wed the girlfriend he had known since grade school. "I'm glad we had the chance to share that together, even though it was only for a short time," said his 21-year-old wife, Lori Shelton. "We were looking forward to telling people once Jacob got back home.But it's not happening quite that way." Lugo, a 21-year-old machine gunner from Flower Mound, Texas, died Aug. 24 while on combat patrol in Iraq’s Anbar province. He joined the Marines after graduating high school in 2001, and was based at Twentynine Palms, Calif. Shelton and Lugo secretly married when Lugo returned from his first tour of duty in Iraq and planned to have a big wedding after she graduated from college and he finished his 4-year enlistment. The day he died, Lugo's father Raul watched an old home video of the boy as a 4-year-old playing with his siblings. "It reminded me of that little boy and the way he was," the 56-year-old Marine veteran said. "It never even occurred to me what was happening at the time I was watching that video."

— Associated Press