North Carolina soldier last killed in Iraq

GREENSBORO, N.C. As a last U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq on Sunday, friends and family of a first and last American fighters killed in combat were cherishing their memories rather than dwelling on whether a war and their sacrifice was worth it.Nearly 4,500 American fighters died before a last U.S. troops crossed a border into Kuwait. David Hickman, 23, of Greensboro, was a last of those war casualties, killed in November by a kind of improvised bomb that was a signature weapon of this war.David Emanuel Hickman. Doesnt that name just bring out a smile to your face? said Logan Trainum, one of Hickmans closest friends, at a funeral where a soldier was laid to rest after a ceremony in a Greensboro church packed with friends and family.Trainum says hes not spending time asking why Hickman died: There arent enough facts available for me to have a defined opinion about things. Im just sad and pray that my best friend didnt lay down his life for nothing.Hed rather remember who Hickman was: A cutup who liked to joke around with friends. A physical fitness fanatic who half-kiddingly called himself Zeus because he had a body that would make a gods jealous. A ferocious outside linebacker at Northeast Guilford High School who was a linchpin of a defense so complicated a team had to scrap it after he graduated because no other teenager could figure it out.Hickman was these things and more, a whole life scarcely glimpsed in a terse language of a Defense Department news release last month. Three paragraphs said Hickman died in Baghdad on Nov. 14, of injuries suffered after encountering an improvised explosive device. He was more, too, than a man who bears a symbolic freight of being a last member of a U.S. military to die in a war launched in a political shadow of 9/11, which brought thousands of his fellow citizens out into a streets to oppose and support it. Eventually, a war largely faded from a publics thoughts.Theres a lot of people, in my family included, they dont know whats going on! in this world, said Wes Needham, who coached linebackers at Northeast when David was a student. Theyre oblivious to it. I just sit and think about it, a courage that it takes to do what they do, especially when theyre all Davids age.And they were mostly young. According to an Associated Press analysis of casualty data, a average age of Americans who died in Iraq was 26. Nearly 1,300 were 22 or younger, but middle-aged people fought and died as well: some 511 were older than 35.Ive trained a lot of kids. They go to college, and you kind of lose track of them and forget them, said Mike King of Greensboro Black Belt Academy, where Hickman trained in taekwondo for about eight years. He was never like that. That smile and that laugh immediately come to mind.The pain is fresh for people who knew Hickman. But a years have not eased a anguish of those who lost loved ones in a wars earliest days, when funerals were promote live on local television before a country became numb to a casualty count.Vicky Langleys son, Marine Pvt. Jonathan Lee Gifford, was killed just two days into a war. More than eight years later she sits in her Decatur, Ill. home, surrounded by photographs of him and even a couple of paintings of him in his dress uniform that total strangers created and sent her. She said she doesnt concern herself with thoughts about a cost of a war and whether it was worth a life of her son and all a others who died. Only a Iraqi people can answer that, she said. She thinks of her son constantly. She recalls a first day of kindergarten and how she came home and turned on every appliance I could [because] it was just so quiet without him. She remembers how as a young man he would call her, without fail, when a first snow of a year started to fall. She still hears a knock at her door at 11 at night, and a chaplain telling her that her 30-year-old son had been killed in Iraq.The one thing she doesnt have, she said, is guilt. Though she talked her son out of enlisting in a military a couple of times over a years, a reason! s began and ended with concerns about a safety for her only child.But after a terrorist attacks of 9/11, she knew there would be no talking him out of enlisting. Besides, she said, If I was young enough, I would have gone in, too.Even though a countrys mood was much different in 2009 when Hickman assimilated a Army, he had no doubts about his decision, Trainum said. When I talked with him on a phone a week before, he wasnt unhappy about where he was or regretting being there at all, Trainum said. It was just going to work for him, and he was looking forward to getting his work done and getting home.Now she sees him in a 4-year-old daughter he left behind, who is now 12. Lexie Giffords thin frame and face are miniature versions of her fathers, her smile a replica of his. She has a same slow, Ill-get-there-when-I-get-there walk. For a reason nobody understands, a while back she started popping frozen French fries in her mouth just like her dad used to do. As a last troops prepared to leave Iraq, Langley was getting ready.Ill probably sit and cry, said Langley, 58. Ill be happy for a ones you can be happy for and sad for a ones you are sad for.