3 Soldiers From Area Killed in Combat

Families Remember Victims of Attacks

When Crystal Faulstich's brother brought a friend home one day, she took one look at his blond hair, blue eyes, smile and -- "Uh," she said, as though she lost her breath for a moment. That was it.

She married Raymond J. Faulstich Jr. last August. And when she saw cars crowding the driveway in Leonardtown, Md., on Friday, she thought that maybe her family was surprising her, that he had come home from Iraq already.

But Faulstich an Army private first class, had been killed Thursday in Najaf, the Department of Defense announced yesterday, when his convoy was attacked by small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. He was 24.

Three times in the past few days, families in Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia received the heart-stopping news that loved ones serving in Iraq and Afghanistan had died. From the Eastern Shore to the Blue Ridge Mountains, family support groups dashed to comfort the grieving relatives of those killed on the battlefield.

On Saturday, two soldiers from a Winchester-based unit of the Virginia Army National Guard died in Afghanistan after their vehicle struck a roadside bomb on a dirt road in the countryside.

Staff Sgt. Craig W. Cherry, 39, of Winchester and Sgt. Bobby E. Beasley, 36, of Inwood, W.Va., were killed in the explosion while on patrol in support of voter registration for upcoming elections.

Their unit -- the 3rd Battalion, 116th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 29th Infantry Division -- had arrived in Afghanistan less than a month ago. They were its first casualties.

In Winchester, where Cherry lived with his wife, Donna, and three children, black crepe hung over doorways of the National Guard Armory, and two funeral wreaths stood outside the main entrance.

"Anytime we lose a soldier, it's a serious situation," said Marvin Marsee, a Vietnam veteran and commander of Winchester's American Legion Post 21, one of the largest in the state. "It's one more to mourn on Memorial Day and Veterans Day. And we're going to lose a lot more."

"I never thought this would happen," Cherry's father, Roy Cherry of Windham, Maine, told the Associated Press. "And it hurts. It hurts bad."

Cherry's family in Winchester preferred not to speak to a reporter, according to an official with a military family assistance group.

Fifteen miles north in Inwood, Juanita Beasley, 32, sat in her living room with her mother and several wives of other guardsmen, sharing memories of her husband.