DEATH IN IRAQ
Marine Thought He Might 'Save a Daddy'
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 17, 2007; Page B03
Marine Lance Cpl. Daniel T. Morris had more than enough to worry about in Iraq, but he couldn't forget about his mother on Valentine's Day. The 19-year-old Virginian sent her a dozen red roses and several letters that said he loved her.
"It just made her Valentine's Day that her son was so sweet even while he was fighting over there in Iraq," said his grandmother, Johnny Wood.
That afternoon, Morris's mother, Carol Wendell, got a call: Morris had been killed on Wednesday, several weeks before he was scheduled to return to the United States.
Morris, of Crimora, Va., in the Shenandoah Valley, had been inspecting cars at a security checkpoint in Anbar Province, one of the most dangerous regions in the country, when a bomb exploded and killed him, Wood said.
Since he was a little kid, Morris had wanted to join the military. After spending high school doting on his family and playing trumpet in the marching band, he enlisted and was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division, III Marine Expeditionary Force, based in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii.
"He wanted to go to Iraq to help people, which is what he was doing," Wood said in a telephone interview from the family's home in Raphine, Va. "He told people that one of the reasons was so maybe he could save a daddy or a husband from dying, because he was a single young man."
Morris left Hawaii in September and was scheduled to return there next month; he was due back in Virginia in April. He hadn't decided whether to reenlist and had thought about joining the Secret Service, Wood said.
His relatives organized a drive last year to send sweatshirts and caps to his 160-person unit, which touched him deeply. He sent a letter to one of the women who contributed, which his grandmother read aloud yesterday:
"Despite what you hear on the news or what you read in the paper, it's not as bad as it seems," he wrote. "Sometimes things here get bad and we wonder why we're here, and we realize it's people like you that we protect."
