Soldier From Potomac Was on First Tour

Army Capt. Brian M. Bunting was a Potomac star athlete, a West Point graduate, a man who could be serious and disciplined when he had to be. But the first thing that hits you when looking through his pictures, searching for the story of a life that ended in Afghanistan this week, is the smile: a huge, toothy, goofy grin that radiates an unrestrained happiness, most of all as he holds his 1-year-old son or the hand of his wife.

Perhaps that's to be expected from someone known to his friends and family as "Bubba," a nickname that has stuck through the trial of the past few days. Bunting, 29, a member of the Individual Ready Reserve assigned to the 27th Infantry Brigade Combat Team in Syracuse, N.Y., was killed in Kandahar on Tuesday when a bomb exploded near his vehicle. Three other soldiers died in the attack: Sgt. Schuyler B. Patch, 25, of Owasso, Okla.; Sgt. Scott B. Stream, 39, of Mattoon, Ill.; and Sgt. Daniel J. Thompson, 24, of Madison, Wis.

It was Bunting's first combat tour. He had been mobilized after entering the ready reserve, a pool of soldiers who have completed their service but who remain available for call-up when needed. He had been in Afghanistan since June and became commander of a 15-person team responsible for training and advising the Afghan National Civil Order Police, a task that is the heart of the U.S. strategy for stopping the Taliban.

Maj. Thomas Benton, who knew Bunting in Afghanistan, described him as "a typical hard-charging West Point graduate. Good soldier, good officer." The job was the culmination of everything he had done before in his life. At the Bullis School in Potomac, Bunting distinguished himself as a scholar and an athlete. He was an All-Met football center and state champion wrestler and played lacrosse as well. He was a natural leader, those who knew him said.

"He was extremely disciplined, incredibly hard-working," said Tim Simpson, the admissions director at Bullis and a close friend of Bunting's. "He was one of those guys, he would get into a zone. . . . He would be out on the lacrosse field doing sprints, and people would just try to keep up with Bubba."

"He's just a great guy," his sister-in-law, Sue Bunting, said yesterday. "He just made everyone feel welcome and at ease."

His grades were good enough that he was admitted to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. He ultimately chose West Point after graduating from Bullis in 1998, even though his father and two brothers had served in the Navy, a subject that got a chuckle out of his sister-in-law.

"Army-Navy games were fun," she said.

There was plenty of friendly rivalry in the large, tight-knit family, and Bunting's nickname originated as a bit of mockery.

"Brian is a good-looking wrestler, but when he was born, he was ugly," his older brother, Bobby Bunting, said in a 1997 Washington Post article about his sibling, who had just won a 152-pound wrestling title. "He had a bad face -- he was fat. He just looked like a Bubba."

But in photographs, the stern expression of his official West Point portrait in cadet gray melts away, particularly in pictures he shares with his son, Connor, and his wife, Nicole Pascal Bunting, whom he married in 2006. He last saw them in January, when he had a two-week leave from Afghanistan.

"That smile, that big, toothy smile, was something on his face 99 percent of the time," Simpson said. "He was just that kind of individual that you felt lucky to know."

His former wrestling coach, Alex Leiderman, lives outside Chicago. On Thursday night, he looked at a picture of the senior wrestlers in Bunting's class and cried when he read a note Bunting had written to him. "I will come back to visit you coach, when I make General," the note said.

Staff writer Clarence Williams contributed to this report.