Green Beret, Marine honored

Casualties of fighting in Afghanistan are laid to rest in Arlington

Malaki Mills, who turned 1 last week, sat on his mother's knee at Arlington National Cemetery on Tuesday and waved a tiny American flag in the crisp fall air. A little while later, a sober Army soldier gave him a larger flag to keep -- in honor of his father, Joshua M. Mills, an Army Green Beret killed in Afghanistan.

Staff Sgt. Mills, 24, of El Paso, who died in September, was one of two servicemen buried with full military honors Tuesday at Arlington, laid to rest to the mournful sound of taps and the crack of a rifle salute. The other, Lance Cpl. David R. Baker, 22, a Marine from Painesville, Ohio, died Oct. 20 in Afghanistan. He was on foot patrol in Helmand province when a bomb exploded nearby, his father said.

Mills, the son of an Army warrant officer, was so anxious to join the military that he dropped out of the University of Texas at El Paso to enlist in 2005, family members said. He was strong, single-minded and a careful student of history, and ultimately he was selected to join the Green Berets, the Army's elite Special Forces branch.

Mills's wife, Magen, 21, said that as a communications sergeant with the 3rd Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group, her husband had been sent on missions to Guatemala and Afghanistan before he was deployed to Afghanistan again in August. She last heard from him via a text message a few days before he and two other soldiers died Sept. 16, after their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb.

She was on her way to see the Dallas Cowboys, his favorite team.

"He said, 'I love you and be safe,' Magen Mills recalled. "It wasn't his voice, but it was him."

She said she first glimpsed her "gorgeous" husband while still a high school student, when he pulled up in his copper-colored Camaro at her high school softball game. When they later started dating, they realized quickly how much they had in common: love of country music, "Friends" reruns and dark chocolate. The couple settled in Raeford, N.C., just outside Fort Bragg, shortly after their wedding in 2007.

"He was all about family, he was all about his country, his job and his friends," she said. "I don't know the perfect words. Josh had an affect on people I'm just beginning to see."

Lance Cpl. Baker grew up in a small community on the shores of Lake Erie, said his father, Mark Baker, 52, a chemist.

The young man with the fringe of dark hair was so shy and unassuming as a child that he was always in the background in family photos and had to be cajoled into having a birthday party, Mark Baker said. But as early as sixth grade, David Baker was vowing to become a Marine. He enlisted shortly after graduating from Riverside High School in 2006.

He was terribly homesick at boot camp and while stationed at Camp Pendleton in California. But something in him changed after he was deployed in May to Afghanistan as a "mortar man" in the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division.

Where once he had been tentative, he now sounded calm and confident, his grandfather, James Baker, recalled this week. But members of his family worried when they learned that he was leading patrols through Helmand province's dangerous terrain.

"I said, 'Why are you always out front?' " Mark Baker recalled. "He flat-out told me, 'Dad, it's my job.' "

David Baker had hoped to be back in the United States by Christmas, and he dreamed of attending college after his tour was up next year. He had told them so when he made a round of calls to his grandparents, friends and other family in late September on a satellite phone.

"He's never done that before," Baker said. "In hindsight, it was almost like he was saying goodbye."

At Baker's service, the U.S. Marine Band played a mournful version of "Eternal Father, Strong to Save" as military officials presented folded flags to Mark Baker and his former wife, Laurie A. Lewkowski. Lewkowski rocked back and forth as she held hers, the last remnant of her dead son.