82nd Airborne

WILLOW GROVE, Pa. -- The C-141s came in from the north with the weight of history and the lightness of air.Pvt. Mike Junio of nearby Philadelphia was fifth in line, in the first plane, on the first pass over Willow Grove Naval Air Station.At that moment, 800 feet above the ground in a windowless airplane, the 20-year-old paratrooper wasn't thinking about the 50 years the Army's 82nd Airborne Division has been doing operations like this; wasn't thinking about the World War II campaigns in Sicily, Salerno, Anzio and Normandy, or the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, or Grenada, or Panama, or, most recently, the Desert Storm operation in Iraq.

Brian R. Murphy, a Social Security Administration senior technical adviser and Army veteran, died Friday of cancer at Gilchrist Hospice Care in Towson. The lifelong Hamilton resident was 59. The son of a Baltimore Life Insurance Co. regional manager and a homemaker, Brian Robertson Murphy was born in Scranton, Pa., and raised in Hamilton. He attended Northern High School and later earned his general educational development diploma. Mr. Murphy studied biology at Morgan State University before enlisting in the Army in 1974, where he served with the 82nd Airborne and attained the rank of sergeant.

WASHINGTON - A small number of soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division abused ethnic Albanian civilians in Kosovo earlier this year, according to an Army investigative report released yesterday. The report concluded that the unit was trained for high-intensity combat and could not switch to the subtle and complex mission of peacekeeping. The soldiers took part in the interrogation, intimidation and beatings of ethnic Albanians, the report said. Army soldiers also touched ethnic Albanian women on their breasts and buttocks.

CHICAGO -- There is a spring in my step and a song in my heart, because the election is over and my party won. Not the Democrats, and not the Republicans. No, the party that deeply distrusts both Nancy Pelosi and George W. Bush: the Divided Government Party. For the last 12 years, Republicans have controlled the House of Representatives, and for most of that time they also ruled the Senate. During the Bush administration, this has been a bad thing, particularly for people who favored less government, and for people who liked Mr. Bush in 2000 because he opposed using the military for nation-building - or, as Condoleezza Rice once put it, having "the 82nd Airborne escorting kids to kindergarten."

FORT BRAGG, N.C. - Sgt. Steven Snyder is getting his affairs in order. He has updated his will, directed his paycheck to go to his family and given his wife, Jamie, power of attorney. For the first time in his six years in the military, the 27-year-old soldier is facing the grim reality that he likely will go to war. An infantryman in the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, Snyder has spent the last year and a half preparing for dangerous missions. His division is capable of deploying soldiers and conducting airborne operations anywhere in the world within 18 hours.

CHICAGO -- There is a spring in my step and a song in my heart, because the election is over and my party won. Not the Democrats, and not the Republicans. No, the party that deeply distrusts both Nancy Pelosi and George W. Bush: the Divided Government Party. For the last 12 years, Republicans have controlled the House of Representatives, and for most of that time they also ruled the Senate. During the Bush administration, this has been a bad thing, particularly for people who favored less government, and for people who liked Mr. Bush in 2000 because he opposed using the military for nation-building - or, as Condoleezza Rice once put it, having "the 82nd Airborne escorting kids to kindergarten."

NEAR NAJAF, Iraq - The temperature reached 112 degrees in Baghdad yesterday and the high 90s elsewhere in Iraq, leading U.S. soldiers to strip off their protective biochemical suits to seek relief from the withering heat. Supply tanks filled with water wended their way to the troops, who have been ordered to drink 2 gallons a day to stave off heat exhaustion. Not everyone was so lucky; two soldiers with the 101st Airborne Division collapsed from dehydration, the first stage of heat-related illness.

Carl Mauro, an Anne Arundel County public schools educator and decorated World War II veteran, died Saturday of a heart attack at his daughter's Wilmington, N.C., home. The Arnold resident was 88. Born in Bushnell's Basin, N.Y., and raised in nearby East Rochester, he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Brockport University before enlisting in the Army and becoming a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division. "He wore his 82nd Airborne hat wherever he went," said his son-in-law John R. Hammond, the Anne Arundel budget officer.

Saying the Army faces some troubling days ahead, the new commander of the 1st U.S. Army based at Fort Meade told troops yesterday he is committed to maintaining a top-notch fighting force."

FALLUJAH, Iraq - U.S. troops killed two more anti-American demonstrators here yesterday, less than 48 hours after soldiers killed 15 and wounded 75 during a rally Monday night in this rundown city 30 miles west of Baghdad. The Army said soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division shot in self-defense about 10:30 a.m. after someone in the crowd fired an AK-47 assault rifle. However, protesters asserted that the soldiers shot without provocation. Whichever version proves true, the deadly incidents reflect the difficulty that U.S. forces face now that they have moved from making war to keeping peace in Iraq.

Robert D. Horsey, a retired Somerset County District Court judge and sailor, died at his Marion Station home Sunday of Lewy Body dementia, a progressive brain disease. He was 72. Judge Horsey was born at his family's Coulbourne Creek home in the lower Eastern Shore county and raised at a nearby farm. After graduating from Crisfield High School in 1951, he worked for two years for the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, surveying the Eastern Seaboard from New England to Key West, Fla. He enlisted in the Army and served as a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division from 1954 to 1956.

On May 17, 2006 JUNIOR LEEMc CARTNEY; beloved husband of the late Mary Elizabeth Mc Cartney (nee Brown); devoted step father of Jacquiline Burleson and her husband Randy and the late Larry Fisher and his wife Ingrid; dear grandfather of Deniese Black and her husband Christopher, Joseph Sharp and his wife Jill, Donna Webb, and the late Travis Sharp and Jamie Lynn; great grandfather of Aubrey Sharp, Brandon, Kaileigh, Alexis and Austen Almeida. Mr. Mc Cartney is retired from Iron Workers local 16, he was an avid parachutist and outdoor sportsman and served his country in the 82nd airborne during the Korean War. Friends may call at the family owned Bruzdzinski Funeral Home P.A., 1407 Old Eastern Avenue, Essex at Route 702 (beltway exit 36)

William L. Davis Jr., a retired construction company executive, decorated World War II combat veteran and founder of an Irish folk band that has been performing in the Baltimore-Washington area for more than three decades, died of Parkinson's disease Sunday at his Sykesville home. He was 84. Mr. Davis was born and raised in Baltimore, the eldest of five children. His father was of Welsh descent and his mother an immigrant to Baltimore from Ireland's County Mayo. "He began singing when he was a kid growing up in the old 10th Ward, and performing in skits and shows at St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church," said son-in-law Michael D. Fadrowski of Westminster.

Carl Mauro, an Anne Arundel County public schools educator and decorated World War II veteran, died Saturday of a heart attack at his daughter's Wilmington, N.C., home. The Arnold resident was 88. Born in Bushnell's Basin, N.Y., and raised in nearby East Rochester, he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Brockport University before enlisting in the Army and becoming a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division. "He wore his 82nd Airborne hat wherever he went," said his son-in-law John R. Hammond, the Anne Arundel budget officer.

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is boosting the total number of American troops in Iraq to 150,000, the highest number deployed since the war began in March last year. Army Brig. Gen. David Rodriguez told reporters at the Pentagon yesterday that the increase from the current 138,000 troops would "mainly provide security" for Iraqi elections scheduled for the end of next month and "keep up the pressure on the insurgency since the Fallujah operation." Rodriguez was referring to recent combat in the restive city that had become a haven for insurgents west of Baghdad.

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. - On Wednesday, Spc. Phil McIlroy came home from Iraq. Yesterday, the 22-year-old visited a stone marker here bearing the name of a friend in the 82nd Airborne Division who died in an ambush last year when both were in Afghanistan. McIlroy has heard news reports about the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. He has been told that one of the accused Cumberland-based reservists, Pvt. Lynndie England, is at nearby Fort Bragg awaiting possible charges. To McIlroy, the abuse of prisoners is plain wrong and, based on his stints in Iraq and Afghanistan, rare.

On May 17, 2006 JUNIOR LEEMc CARTNEY; beloved husband of the late Mary Elizabeth Mc Cartney (nee Brown); devoted step father of Jacquiline Burleson and her husband Randy and the late Larry Fisher and his wife Ingrid; dear grandfather of Deniese Black and her husband Christopher, Joseph Sharp and his wife Jill, Donna Webb, and the late Travis Sharp and Jamie Lynn; great grandfather of Aubrey Sharp, Brandon, Kaileigh, Alexis and Austen Almeida. Mr. Mc Cartney is retired from Iron Workers local 16, he was an avid parachutist and outdoor sportsman and served his country in the 82nd airborne during the Korean War. Friends may call at the family owned Bruzdzinski Funeral Home P.A., 1407 Old Eastern Avenue, Essex at Route 702 (beltway exit 36)

Thanks to eighth-graders at Johnnycake Middle School, a lonely GI in Saudi Arabia is getting mail from home.Last month Army Pvt. Gary Gustafson, serving with the 27th Engineers, attached to the 82nd Airborne Division, wrote to USA Today complaining that he had nobody to write.Joe Selby, a social studies teacher at the Baltimore County middle school, showed the letter to a colleague, Dan Shaner, who teaches English. Mr. Shaner turned the soldier's plight into a special project for extra credit.

I STEPPED briefly into a discussion between a father in suburban Baltimore and his only son, stationed at Fort Bragg, N.C. The discussion took place by e-mail, cell phone and Nextel. The subject was war in Iraq. It was a surprising e-mail from the dad -- "The proud parent of a member of the elite 82nd Airborne Division of the United States Army" -- that got things started. "I hate to call the president of the United States a liar," the father said, but that's exactly what David Robinette thinks of George W. Bush.

CHESTERTOWN -- A 19-year-old paratrooper from Kent County, eight months past his high school graduation, was killed in an accident outside Baghdad, becoming the eighth casualty from Maryland since U.S. forces invaded Iraq nearly a year ago. Pvt. Bryan Nicholas Spry, a driver with the elite 82nd Airborne, died Friday after the Humvee he was driving turned over, landing upside down and pinning the former junior varsity baseball player in a water-filled ditch,...