Md. Soldier Killed in Iraq; Army Was Lifelong Dream
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Saturday, May 20, 2006
He grew up near the battlefield at Gettysburg, Pa., where the Union was saved in 1863, and ever since he was a small boy, Robert A. Seidel III of Emmitsburg wanted to be a soldier.
"He wanted to continue carrying that torch of freedom," his father, Robert A. Seidel Jr., said last night.
On Thursday, 1st Lt. Robert A. Seidel III, a 2004 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, was killed in Iraq.
His father said he was killed in Baghdad by a roadside bomb that exploded near his Humvee.
He was 23 years old and a rifle platoon leader with the 2nd Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment of the 10th Mountain Division, based at Fort Drum, N.Y.
"Ever since he was growing up," said his grandfather, Robert A. Seidel Sr., 76, of Emmitsburg, "he wanted to be in the Army."
The lieutenant and his family were frequent visitors to Gettysburg, about a dozen miles from where they lived during his boyhood.
"We went there often," the father said. "And I think he recognized the price paid in casualties during that three-day battle.
"He loved his family and believed in God, and he loved his country," his father said. And he, too, "was willing to pay the ultimate sacrifice in behalf of his country."
Seidel, who liked country music and played football and baseball, graduated from Catoctin High School in Thurmont in 2000 and enrolled in the Class of 2004 at West Point. His family said that as far as they knew, he was the first Emmitsburg resident to graduate from the military academy. The academy researched it, his father said, and it "could not find anybody else."
At West Point, relatives said, his major subject was law, and he also did work in environmental engineering. He earned Ranger, Air Assault and Airborne badges and planned to go into the Special Forces and make a career of the Army.
He was deployed to Iraq in August. His grandfather, a former mayor of Emmitsburg who saw combat during the Korean War, said he often advised his grandson to choose a military branch other than the infantry, but to no avail.
