Marine Pfc. Robert A. Guy

Died April 21, 2005 Serving During Operation Iraqi Freedom

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26, of Willards, Md.; assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C.; died April 21 as a result of a non-hostile incident near Karmah, Iraq.

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N.C.-based Marine killed in Iraq

Associated Press

WILLARDS, Md. — A North Carolina-based Marine was killed Thursday near Fallujah, Iraq, according to his family.

Pfc. Robert “Bobby” Guy, 26, died after being shot in the head, his mother, Ann Guy, told The (Salisbury) Daily Times.

“He wanted to be there,” Ann Guy said of her son’s deployment to Iraq. “He wanted to be there, and he was so proud to be a Marine.”

Attempts to reach a number listed for Ann Guy in Willards by The Associated Press were unsuccessful Sunday night. A message left with a Marine spokesman wasn’t immediately returned.

At the local fire hall in this tiny Wicomico County town, just around the corner from Guy’s house, a sign read: “God bless our hero Bobby Guy.”

Over the weekend, Guy’s family and friends remembered Guy as a goodhearted man who loved jokes and who worked for more than a year to become a Marine. “I never saw him work at anything so hard his whole life,” Ann Guy said. “He really wanted this.”

Guy graduated from boot camp in June and was a member of the 2nd Marine Division based at Camp Lejeune, N.C. He left for Iraq in January and had been scheduled to come home in August. He was also close to being promoted to lance corporal, his mother said.

A former Parkside High School student, he left before graduating, earning his graduate equivalency diploma while living in Arkansas.

“He did make some wrong choices, and he did his best when he grew up a little bit,” said Cory Perdue, a high school friend. “Going into the Marine Corps was just the next step for him improving himself.”

Deborah Cox, Guy’s aunt, said she remembered her nephew’s sense of humor, a side of Guy that Perdue spoke about as well. “He was very outgoing,” Perdue said. “He was in trouble quite a lot, but it was just mischief trouble. It wasn’t any kind of big trouble.”

Friends and family said Guy was a dedicated Marine. Ann Guy remembered a conversation she had with her son about joining the Marines.

“He said ‘Mom, are you going to be OK with this?”’ Ann Guy said. “And I said, ‘Bobby, I’m going to tell you right now, there isn’t a mother alive that wants to see her son going off to war.”’

But Ann Guy said she supported him entirely when he decided to join: “He died doing what he wanted to do.”

Guy is survived by his mother, Ann, his father, James Allen Guy Sr., and a brother, James Allen Guy Jr.