John Rutherford
By John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington
A final tribute to the U.S. troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The following eight service members died last week in the two war zones:
1. Marine Lance Cpl. Robert Johnson, 21, liked to jump off waterfalls and tear up his dad's car while growing up in Central Point, Ore. "He was the one who always stirred up trouble in our family," his mother told the Oregonian. He enlisted in 2005 out of high school and was on his second tour in Iraq when he died Dec. 20 in a non-hostile incident in Anbar province. Johnson, with the 1st Marine Logistics Group, leaves his widow, Elizabeth, whom he married in March.
2. Marine Lance Cpl. Thomas Reilly Jr., 19, of London, Ky., was so good at decorating cakes in high school that he considered entering culinary school after his military service. Serving in Iraq with the 3rd Marine Division, he was killed Dec. 21 when a rocket propelled grenade struck his Humvee in Anbar province. His mother was told of his death while at a hospital where her daughter had just given birth. "She is really struggling," a friend told the Times Tribune.
3. Army Staff Sgt. Christopher Smith, 28, of Grand Rapids, Mich., was an outdoorsman who loved to golf and hunt and a family man who loved to grill briskets and ribs. "He really lived for his family," his wife, Bobbi Jo, told detnew.com. "He was that kind of guy." He was one of three members of the 4th Infantry Division who were killed Dec. 24 in a vehicle rollover in Baghdad. Smith was on his second tour in Iraq. He also leaves a 15-month-old son, Adler.
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By John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington
Army PFC Derek Derose, who was wounded Oct. 17 by a roadside bomb while on patrol near Beni Zaid, Iraq, has a mixed assessment of the situation in Iraq.
"As far as conflict-wise, it's pretty much over, mainly encountering IEDs," Derose, 20, of Stafford, Va., said last Friday after receiving a Purple Heart at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. "We are putting a really big dent in their [al Qaeda's] caches. We quickly became cache killers because we were finding some large caches.
"But as far as this country stabilizing, I don't see it happening any time soon, because they [the Iraqis] are lazy, and they just love to take handouts. So until they get the initiative to take it on their own and do stuff to get their country up and running, we're going to be over there for a while."
Derose (right) deployed to Iraq a year ago with the 25th Infantry Division. He was the only soldier at this month's ceremony to receive a Purple Heart, the lowest number in months.
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At the same time, the military is reporting a dramatic drop in casualties in both war zones. The last U.S. combat death in Iraq was on Dec. 4; in Afghanistan on Dec. 1.
"This shouldn't suggest that things will be easier in Afghanistan," MSNBC military analyst Col. Jack Jacobs told me. "Indeed, the opposite is true, and we are in for a hell of a ride next year."
Jacobs said the fighting and dying are down in Afghanistan because of the weather.
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By John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington
Army Capt. Warren Orr Jr. hated injustice, whether it was in his hometown of Kewanee, Ill., or in the villages of Vietnam.
"One time he was coming home from school and he saw this man whipping his dog, and he told the man, 'I'm going to go home and tell my dad, and my dad's going to come down here and whip you like you whipped your dog,'" his father, Warren Orr Sr., recalled recently.
"The next thing I know there's two policemen at my door with a restraining order," his father said with a chuckle. "I didn't know that guy or anything about him, but my son just hated to see anybody abused."
Capt. Orr's sense of compassion continued in the Army, which he joined in 1960 and which sent him to Vietnam as a civil affairs officer, taking care of refugees.
"His main job was making sure they got food and medicine and housing, and he loved doing that," his father said.
Photo of Warren Orr Sr. holding a picture of his son, Army Capt. Warren Orr Jr., courtesy of Rod Veal, The Orange County Register.
On May 12, 1968, Capt. Orr was helping evacuate several hundred Vietnamese women and children from the besieged Kham Duc Special Forces Camp, near Da Nang, before it was overrun by North Vietnamese forces. Their C-130 transport plane was hit by enemy fire on takeoff, exploded in midair and crashed into the jungle. Everyone on board perished.
But was Capt. Orr actually on the plane?
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By John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington
The saying "only the good die young" was never truer than over the past week at Arlington National Cemetery, where three of the military's finest were laid to rest with full military honors.
All three were killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A flyover of four F-18s in a missing man formation preceded the burial last Friday of Marine Capt. Garrett Lawton, who died Aug. 4 of wounds suffered in a roadside bombing in Afghanistan.
Lawton, 31, graduated from West Virginia University in 1999 with dual degrees in 
aerospace and mechanical engineering. He served a combat tour in Iraq as a Marine aviator before his deployment to Afghanistan.
"It seems like everyone always has wonderful things to say about people when they die, even if they're not all true, but it is true for Garrett," his sister Kenna said at his memorial service, according to the Beaufort (S.C.) Gazette. "He was a wonderful man, father, husband, son, brother and Marine."
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his wife Deborah comforted Lawton's widow Trisha and their sons, Ryan, 6, and Caden, 4, at the end of his graveside service.
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By John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington
When the New York Giants thumped the Washington Redskins Sunday, 23-7, the Giants' honorary co-captain, Army Lt. Col. Greg Gadson, was on the sidelines, cheering the Super Bowl champs on to victory.
"They're playing with great confidence, and you can't underscore how well they're playing as a team," the 42-year-old Gadson said after the game.
That wasn't the case a year ago. Gadson, who lost both legs to a roadside bomb in Baghdad, was asked to give the winless Giants a pep talk before last year's game in Washington.
"I talked to them about their obligation as professionals to do their best," he said. 
The Giants responded by beating the Redskins, 24-17, turning their season around, and going on to win the Super Bowl. In April, they brought Gadson along with them to meet President Bush at the White House.
"Greg has just been an unbelievable inspiration to this team," Giants quarterback Eli Manning said at the time.
Gadson is modest about any role he's played in the Giants' success.
"I guess that would assume there was some direct linkage between me and their success," he said. "I would be the last to attribute their success to me."
Still, Gadson and the Giants remain in close contact.
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By John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington
This is a story about one soldier's service and sacrifice for his country.
Army Sgt. Kelly Keck, 34, of West Liberty, Ky., was a combat medic in Afghanistan. On Sept. 13 he came to the aid of several soldiers whose truck was blown up by a roadside bomb.
"I stepped off the road to try to get to the side of the truck, and the next thing I know I hear a loud boom, and I'm laying on the ground," he said recently.
Keck had stepped on a land mine. Seriously wounded, he was still alert enough to tell those assisting him that he needed a morphine injection for his pain. They hesitated.
"I said, 'I don't want pain. If I tell you to give it to me, you know, I'm your doc, so give it to me,'" he said.
Keck got his injection and was quickly medevaced to a field hospital in Jalalabad, 
but he ended up losing three fingers on his left hand and his right leg below the knee.
"It was quite an ordeal," the soft-spoken soldier said.
Keck was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he's been recuperating for about two months.
"The care's been really good, at least for me," he said. "I've had no problems, really. The biggest thing is if I have pain, say in my leg, and it's the phantom pain, as a lot of it is, it hurts really bad. Getting the right medication sometimes takes awhile because they start from the bottom and go up to see how bad it is."
Keck is one of 10,000 troops from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who've been treated at Walter Reed for their wounds. I met him after he received a Purple Heart last week from Army Secretary Pete Geren.
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By John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington
Army Sgt. Cornelius Charlton, one of the last of the all-black Buffalo Soldiers and a recipient of the Medal of Honor for his heroics during the Korean War, has finally been laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery.
"I wish we didn't have to wait so long for this to happen, but he is now in his rightful resting place," said his niece, Zenobia Penn, of New London, Conn.
"Connie" Charlton served with the 24th Infantry Regiment, nicknamed the Buffalo
Soldiers by American Indians after its creation by Congress in 1866. The regiment, the last of the all-black Army units, was disbanded in 1951, shortly after Charlton was fatally wounded leading an assault on Communist forces northeast of Seoul, South Korea.
"The wounds received during his daring exploits resulted in his death, but his indomitable courage, superb leadership and gallant self-sacrifice reflect the highest credit upon himself, the infantry and the military service," his Medal of Honor citation reads.
His late brother Arthur said Charlton was initially denied burial at Arlington National Cemetery because he was black. The cemetery insisted that was not true.
"We have never denied burial to an eligible service member or veteran based on race or color," Arlington's superintendent, John Metzler, said.
Whoever's right, Charlton's mother had him buried in a family plot in Pocahontas, Va. When the cemetery fell into disrepair, his body was disinterred and reburied in 1990 in the American Legion Cemetery in Beckley, W.Va.
There it remained until his niece decided she wanted Charlton buried instead at Arlington National Cemetery.
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By John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington
Len and Mary Ann Cowherd noticed a big white pickup truck pulling into the driveway of their Culpeper, Va., home about 8:30 in the evening of May 16, 2004.
"When a couple of guys in Army uniforms got out, we pretty much knew what had happened," Len said recently. "They came in, and we talked to them, and we tried to help them out because it's a pretty rough business for them, too."
The soldiers were there to inform the Cowherds that their son, Army 2nd Lt. Leonard Cowherd III, 22, West Point class of '03, had been killed earlier that day by sniper fire and rocket-propelled grenades in Karbala, Iraq.
"When it first happens, you're in shock, and that helps lessen some of the pain," Len said. "Then after awhile you have this empty space, and that empty space is what you have for the rest of your life."
Len and Mary Ann tried to fill that empty space by talking constantly about their son and by sharing his letters home with others.
"The most intense letter was the one to my wife, her Mother's Day card, which 
arrived a week after he died," Len said. "It was an extremely powerful one."
Lt. Cowherd had dated the Mother's Day card May 8, 2004, eight days before his death.
"I send my heartfelt love to you from across the ocean," he wrote. "I think of Mother's Days from years past - going to St. Stephen's, going with the family to China Jade, where they hand out roses to the mothers - all these wonderful memories of you, the family, home, come rushing into my head and fill me with emotion. So many wonderful experiences, so many things to be thankful for."
The Mother's Day card and other letters from Lt. Cowherd eventually found their way onto the op-ed page of the New York Times and into an HBO documentary and several books of letters home from soldiers.
"It keeps his memory alive," Len said.
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By John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington
While America was choosing a new president, the following 17 Americans were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan in the three weeks leading up to the election:
1. Army Sgt. Daniel Wallace, 27, of Dry Ridge, Ky., deployed to Afghanistan in May with the Kentucky National Guard. He was very religious and helped his unit's chaplain. He had asked his mother to write letters to soldiers who had not received letters of their own. "Danny had a lot, a lot of sympathy for people," his mother told the Herald-Dispatch. Wallace was killed Oct. 31 by small arms fire in Badin Kheyl. He is survived by his 6-year-old son.
2. Army Pfc. Bradley Coleman, 24, of Martinsville, Va., deployed to Iraq in June with the 51st Transportation Company. He died Oct. 29 at Qayyarah Airfield from a gunshot wound. His death was under investigation. "He really liked the Army itself, but once he got to Iraq ... it was hard on him," his stepmother told the Bulletin. Coleman leaves his widow, Heather, and children, Edward, 2, and Shyanna, 1. "He was a sweet, loving person," his stepmother said.
3. Army Sgt. Scott Metcalf, 36, of Framingham, Mass., enlisted in 1990 and was a supply sergeant with the 101st Airborne Division. He was the recipient of seven Army Achievement Medals. Metcalf served in Korea and deployed at least three times to Iraq, where he died Oct. 29 in Balad of injuries suffered from a non-combat related incident that was under investigation. He leaves his widow, Betty, and daughter, Korrine. His family had no comment on his death.
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By John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington
"Medal of Honor," a 90-minute documentary airing Nov. 5 on public television stations around the country, pays tribute to the 3,473 recipients of the nation's highest military award since its creation during the Civil War.
Among those recipients was Army Pfc. James Monroe, a college classmate of mine who was killed in South Vietnam in 1967 when he threw himself on a live grenade.
"Through his valorous actions, performed in a flash of inspired selflessness, Pfc. Monroe saved the lives of two of his comrades and prevented the probable injury of several others," his Medal of Honor citation reads in part.
Rick Olson, Monroe's best friend, was not surprised by Monroe's heroics.
"He was a medic, and I don't think he would have had a second thought about, you know, throwing himself on the grenade," Olson said recently.
Monroe and Olson grew up together in Wheaton, Ill., and went off to college 
together at Washington & Lee University.
"He was very fun loving and kind of irreverent at times," Olson remembers. "He loved to laugh and have a good time."
Monroe studied political science in college but dropped out before graduating and was drafted into the Army. Olson last saw Monroe when his friend was home on leave in August 1966.
"He was gung ho," Olson said. "He was into the war and especially the camaraderie and the brotherhood of soldiers kind of thing. He was very upbeat, and at that time the war wasn't as unpopular as it became, and he was doing okay with that."
Olson pulled out an old newspaper clipping in which Monroe was quoted as saying of the men he served with, "It gives me great pride to see these young guys take a hard job they don't understand and do it - and do it damn well."
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