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Cavalry Scout, 22, Dies Five Days After Roadside Bomb Attack
His father said Wallace had been partly inspired by his paternal grandfather, who served in the Army but died before Wallace's birth. "I told him all kinds of stories and showed him pictures of my dad, and we went through all sorts of scrapbooks," Keith Wallace said.
In Iraq, Wallace was assigned to the Army's 10th Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division. Based out of Fort Hood, Tex., he had earned distinctions as a marksman and the Army Achievement Medal, his family said.
  Cpl. Matthew P. Wallace of Lexington Park "chose to do this," his mother said of his Army career. (Family Photo) |
His parents said Wallace had a gift for humor and loved handwritten letters with details about ordinary life -- what his mother referred to as "the blah, blah letters . . . like, 'Then we went to Wal-Mart.' " "It must have made him feel he was with us vicariously," she said.
Lately he had called his family every few days, including just three days before the bomb blast.
"I asked him how he was," his father recalled. "He was kind of silent for a moment. 'Oh, okay, I guess,' he said." His father went on: "I made sure I comforted him with my abiding love for him and my pride in him. I think the rigors of war were beginning to wear on him."
Wallace, thin and muscular, had always loved music. He played guitar with friends in garage bands, went to concerts and bought piles of CDs.
He wore a Walkman "even after they went out of style," said Mathew Korade, his closest friend since childhood.
After sending Wallace many care packages in Iraq, Korade said he had recently bought his friend an acoustic guitar, so he could play in the war zone. "I imagined him opening it," he said.
His voice softened into a near-whisper. "We were like brothers. I loved him more than anything. . . . I just wish he was coming home."
