3 Soldiers From Area Killed in Combat

He was an avid outdoorsman, she said. He loved to hike, fly fish, camp. He was an amateur photographer known to leap from his easy chair to photograph wildlife that wandered through their yard.

As for his Afghanistan tour, "He kept telling me he wanted to be there," his wife said, "and to be proud of him. Like everyone else, no man wants to leave his family, but you do it. I'll never find anybody who loved me like he did."

Faulstich grew up in Leonardtown, in Southern Maryland, moved with his family to Arizona for a few years, then came back to Leonardtown. His family described a charmer, a boy who would make everyone smile and never thought too far into the future.

"He never really worried about things," said his mother, Linda Faulstich. "He had a beautiful smile. He just seemed to be happy all the time."

He was such a good-looking young man, his mother said, that one time she came around a corner and found two carloads of girls, each trying to pick him up.

Faulstich always lighted up a room, his father, Raymond Faulstich Sr., said. "The kid was always smiling. He just always seemed happy, carefree."

But his teenage years hadn't gone smoothly, his father said. He'd experimented with drugs and dropped out of high school at the end of his senior year. But then he'd gone on to earn his high school equivalency degree, his father said.

And he joined the Army, planning to earn money for college. "It was a remarkable turnaround that he did," his father said.

His mother credits Crystal with his transformation.

"He wanted her so bad," his mother said. "Her parents said he would have to straighten up if he wanted to date her, and he did. He told her mother, 'You're going to be proud of me.' "

Crystal Faulstich knew he'd straighten out. "I was there through it all. It was hard. But I was never worried. I always had faith."

They married last Aug. 29, at the courthouse in St. Mary's County, keeping it secret from their families until afterward.

In March, he was sent to Iraq with the 89th Transportation Company, 6th Transportation Battalion, 7th Transportation Group.

"We were going to have a real big wedding when he got back," Crystal Faulstich said.

The Winchester soldiers, members of the anti-armor section of the unit's Headquarters Company, had arrived in Afghanistan to replace a Marine regiment. Their mission over the next year is to provide security that would set the stage for elections and reconstruction.

Few details were available about the Saturday attack in the remote mountainous southeastern province of Ghazni. An Afghan interpreter also died.

Yesterday morning, National Guardsmen held a memorial service in Afghanistan, with an invocation before a plywood altar and the American, Afghan and Virginia flags flying at half-staff.

Staff writers Carol Morello and Susan Kinzie contributed to this report.