Marine Sgt. Chad M. Allen

Died February 28, 2007 Serving During Operation Iraqi Freedom

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25, of Maple Lake, Minn.; assigned to 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C.; died Feb. 28 while conducting combat operations in Anbar province, Iraq.

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Minnesota Marines killed in Iraq

The Associated Press

MINNEAPOLIS — A 25-year-old Marine from Maple Lake was killed in Al Anbar province, Iraq, when a bomb exploded during combat operations, the Department of Defense and his family said March 1.

Sgt. Chad M. Allen was on his second deployment in Iraq and was scheduled to leave the Marines on May 1, his father said.

Allen, who died Feb. 28, entered the Marine Corps in 2003 and was trained as a light armored vehicle crewman before joining the 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, according to a Marine Corps news release. His father, Steve Allen, of Danbury, Wis., described his son as a “very well loved young man.”

Allen enlisted in the Marines the day after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks but didn’t go in until 2003, said his mother, Deborah Allen, also of Danbury. “He was going to save his family from harm.”

Allen was assigned to the 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

His parents said he volunteered for a second tour of duty in Iraq to take the place of an injured fellow Marine. Steve Allen said his son had told him Feb. 25 that he had been promoted to sergeant.

Chad Allen, the second of four children, grew up in Maple Lake and graduated from high school there. He worked for a car wash and a landscape company before joining the Marines.

He loved to fish and ride his motorcycle and was homecoming king in high school, his mother said. “He was awesome, he was the coolest kid,” she said. “He was very happy, very outgoing, never could sit still for a minute.”

Allen was the second service member from Minnesota to die this week. On Feb. 26, Army Sgt. William Beardsley, 25, was killed by a roadside bomb in Diwaniyah, about 100 miles south of Baghdad.

Beardsley, who had lived in Coon Rapids for a short time, had signed up for a second tour in part for health insurance to cover his wife’s medical bills. He died the day she left the hospital.

His father, Jim Beardsley of Blaine, said his son had a request.

“He said, ‘If anything happens to me, I want to make sure my kids know who I am,’ ” Jim Beardsley said. “He was afraid that if something happened to him, the kids being as small as they are, they wouldn’t understand why he was gone. ... They’d think he was just gone. That was his fear.”

Jim Beardsley said his son came to Coon Rapids in 2002 or 2003 to work at his father’s excavating business.

“He’d outwork anybody. If somebody else would dig, he’d dig faster,” Jim Beardsley said.

The younger Beardsley left the Twin Cities in December 2005 to join the Army, and shipped out to Iraq in September.