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BRENT CHAMPACO; The News Tribune
The bond between Cpl. Kenneth Cross and Pfc. Daniel Dolan was obvious even when the two weren’t in uniform, their fellow soldiers say.
They were once roommates. They attended each other’s parties. Friends often saw them joking together in the barracks.
The two men also died together Aug. 27, when a roadside bomb hit their Stryker vehicle in Baghdad.
On Tuesday, about 250 people filled the Fort Lewis Main Post Chapel to honor the pair.
Lt. Col. Chris Cieply, a Stryker brigade chaplain, said Cross’ and Dolan’s deaths are especially tragic because the two were so close. Cross, 21, was a resident of Superior, Wis. Dolan, 19, was from Roy, Utah.
“They lived together and died together,” Cieply said.
Cross and Dolan were the first Stryker troops from Fort Lewis to be killed in Baghdad. About 1,400 Fort Lewis soldiers from the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division are part of a beefed-up U.S. and Iraqi force that’s trying to put down sectarian fighting and violent crime in the capital.
The explosion that struck a 21-ton armored Stryker on Aug. 27 instantly killed Cross and wounded Dolan, who died hours later at a Baghdad military hospital, according to the Stars and Stripes newspaper.
The attack wounded seven soldiers, the newspaper reported. It included two roadside bombs, gunfire and a mortar attack.
The brigade has lost four soldiers since returning to Iraq in July. Sgt. Gabriel G. DeRoo, 25, was killed Aug. 20 by gunfire in Mosul, the northern city where the brigade is headquartered.
Another Stryker soldier was killed near Mosul on Sunday in a roadside bombing. The soldier’s name had not been released by Tuesday evening.[...]