Honoring a Slain Soldier's Desire to Serve

Guard Member Asked to Go to War

Hundreds were expected in Cambridge yesterday for the funeral service and military flyover for a top Maryland National Guard member from Annapolis who died recently in Iraq.

Command Sgt. Maj. Roger W. Haller, a 49-year-old master plumber who was commandant of the Maryland Guard's noncommissioned officers' academy, was among 12 soldiers killed when a Black Hawk helicopter crashed northeast of Baghdad on Jan. 20. He had been a member of the Maryland Army National Guard for more than 20 years, spending the past two years on active duty, said Morgan Haller, his 21-year-old daughter.

Haller, who had been an instructor at Camp Fretterd in Reisterstown, was motivated by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and had asked to go to war. He was sent to Afghanistan, his daughter said.

"He wanted to fight for something," she said.

After Sept. 11, "like any other American out there, he wanted to go over there . . . . You sign up for the military because it's your job. You're fighting for freedom . . . . He wanted to be a part of it."

Morgan Haller said that she learned of her father's death Jan. 21 but received few details then. "Just that there was an accident, and he was in it, and that was it," she said.

She said she last talked to her father a week and a half ago. As usual, he spent most of the time asking about her life, saying little about his, other than that he was "fine, just busy here at work," ending with a typical signoff of "Love you. Talk to you later."

She said that serving in the military was a tradition in her family: Her father's father was in the military, as well as his uncle and her other grandfather. Her 22-year-old brother, Daniel Haller, served as an Army sergeant in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Haller was a teenager when he moved to Cambridge, where he and his wife raised three children, including a 17-year-old daughter, Kathryn. He was a typical suburban father who liked to travel with his family and go backpacking, camping and hunting, Morgan Haller said.

"He was our swim coach for eight years," she said. "And he was our Little League coach of T-ball."

He also loved motorcycles and recently purchased a new Harley-Davidson.

Only in the past year, after a divorce from his wife, did he move to the Annapolis area, his daughter said, to be closer to the Maryland National Guard office. As much as he wanted to go to war, he made sure that he picked a tour that would get him back home by May.

"He wanted to be back by May to go to my sister's graduation," Morgan Haller said.

He didn't seem to have regrets about going to war -- and neither did his daughter.

"I was happy for him," Morgan Haller said. "I knew that was something he wanted to do. He kind of felt left out."