Contractors Killed in Iraq

Henry A. Doll DynCorp

Henry A. Doll III, who spent 40 years in law enforcement, told his supervisors that helping to train Iraq's new police force would make him a better police officer. "I feel this opportunity to serve my country would benefit [the sheriff's office] upon my return," Doll wrote to Collier County Sheriff Don Hunter, in Naples, Fla., last July to request a leave of absence. "Dealing with terrorism issues overseas would give me firsthand experience, which would be invaluable to the agency."

Doll spent much of the 1960s in the Army National Guard and the Army Reserve. He became a Pennsylvania state trooper, serving high-risk warrants on felons and rappelling out of helicopters as part of the SWAT team, said his son, Henry Doll, who is a state trooper in Maryland. Later, Henry Doll joined the Collier County Sheriff's Office, where he rose to the rank of corporal and worked in the bailiff bureau and patrol division.

When the 56-year-old Doll decided to join DynCorp, a unit of Computer Sciences Corp., Henry Doll says he asked his dad whether the dangerous working conditions would be worth the salary. His dad responded that it wasn't the money. "It was quite the adrenalin rush, that's how he described it," Henry Doll said. "It was something he felt he could do as a patriotic thing. It was a thrill for him."

-- Renae Merle

Jesse Gentry DynCorp

When he retired from the police force in 2002, Jesse Gentry bought a 29-foot boat named the River Rat. After several months of sailing, he grew bored and took a job with DynCorp, training Iraq's new police force. Teaching was familiar territory for him. His two tours in Vietnam included time training South Vietnamese soldiers, his wife Vicki Gentry said. And when Gentry landed at the Sanford Police Department in Sanford, N.C., after 20 years in the military, he served as a mentor to younger officers.

"He was more of a father figure, slash first sergeant," said Detective Billy Rodgers, Gentry's former partner.

When the 61-year-old Gentry arrived in Iraq in March, he assumed a kind of elder statesman role. "Jesse was 10 years older than me, had served in the military," said Joe Janowski, a former Pennsylvania police officer who worked with Gentry in Iraq. "I listened to his wisdom."

Gentry arrived in Iraq as violence was escalating. He told his wife that it was difficult to travel without a military escort and that he spent much of the first month hanging around the pool. When he started working, it was not what he expected, his wife said.

Gentry told her that instead of teaching, he was doing intelligence work for the military. She said he didn't describe his work in detail, but she could tell he was frustrated. "Without adequate interpreters and training space, he couldn't do what he was sent over there to do," she said. "He told me it was like being on the front lines of Vietnam."

In May, Gentry and Doll died while traveling in a military convoy of 10 vehicles from Tikrit to Baghdad. The convoy was traveling fast to make it a tougher target for insurgents, said Janowski, who was driving.