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Camp Liberty soldiers hit hard by friends’ deaths

Aug-31-2006 » Filed Under: 3/2 SBCT

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by Anita Powell, Stars and Stripes

CAMP LIBERTY, Iraq — Spc. Kenneth Cross was a tall, lanky 21-year-old soldier who dreamed of getting out of the Army and starting a family with his young bride.

Pfc. Daniel Dolan, 19, loved apple-flavored chewing tobacco and talked incessantly of his snowboarding exploits and what he described as “the only girlfriend I need”: his Subaru STi sports car.

On Sunday, both were killed in a complex, coordinated attack in northwestern Baghdad.

They were members of 3rd Platoon, Company C, 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, a Fort Lewis, Wash.-based part of the 2nd Infantry Division. According to Army records, Cross was a native of Superior, Wis.; Dolan was from Roy, Utah.

Both were posthumously promoted — Cross to corporal, Dolan to specialist. They were the first casualties for the battalion since it arrived in Iraq in early August to participate in Operation Together Forward, a mission to reduce sectarian violence in Baghdad.

For soldiers in Cross and Dolan’s platoon, the pain was still fresh Wednesday as they spoke of their friends. For some, the pain was more than emotional: seven soldiers were wounded in Sunday’s attack, which included two roadside bombs, several incidences of gunfire, and a mortar attack.

Cross and Dolan’s Stryker vehicle was destroyed by the first roadside bomb. The explosion killed Cross instantly and wounded Dolan, who died hours later at a military hospital in Baghdad.

Their friends struggled Wednesday to describe the two men, with whom they shared two large, crammed, messy tents on Camp Liberty.


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