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Fort Lewis remembers soldier killed by sniper

Nov-20-2004 » Filed Under: 1/25 SBCT

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MICHAEL GILBERT; The News Tribune

Thomas Doerflinger was not the kind of young man anybody expected to join the Army, friends told his hometown paper.

He was a sharp but distracted student, liked to write poetry and go his own way, and was raised in the middle-class Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., The (Frederick, Md.) Gazette reported. His father, Richard, is a policy adviser with the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops.

But join the Army he did, in October 2002, even though it looked likely that the United States was headed for war with Iraq.

The Fort Lewis community gathered Friday to pay its respects to the 20-year-old infantryman, who was killed Nov. 11 in Mosul, shot by a sniper during a battle with insurgents in the city’s Yarmouk neighborhood. Doerflinger went to Iraq last month with the 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division.

He was the Stryker driver for the executive officer of Bravo Company with the brigade’s 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment. He was the brigade’s third soldier to be killed in Iraq, and one of at least 34 Fort Lewis-based troops to die there or in Afghanistan.

Speakers Friday said the soldier joined the Army despite the risks and did so “not to kill, but to protect people,” said Col. Henri Fischer.

The chaplain said the Bravo Company commander wrote to tell him Doerflinger died while defending his comrades under heavy fire.

The soldier’s funeral was also held Friday, in his hometown of Silver Spring, Md. He is survived by two sisters, 23 and 17, and a brother, 12.

“Our son Thomas was a smart, dedicated, wonderful young man who volunteered for the Army to serve his country and protect innocent people,” his parents, Richard and Lee, said in a statement.

“He understood the risks of his chosen path, and gave his life doing what he had committed himself to doing – standing against those who have no respect for human life.”


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