Army Sgt. Mark R. Vecchione

Died July 18, 2006 serving during Operation Iraqi Freedom

25, of Tucson, Arizona (originally Eastham, Mass.); assigned to 1st Battalion, 37th Armor Regiment, 1st Armored Division, Friedberg, Germany; died July 18 in Ramadi, Iraq, of injuries sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his M1A1 Abrams tank.

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Sgt. Mark R. Vecchione avoided death one time — but fell squarely in its path seconds later.

Vecchione, 25, of Eastham, Mass., a member of Company B, 1st Battalion, 37th Armor Regiment — part of the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division — was recently given command of a tank of his own.

But, on July 18, 2006,  he volunteered to fill in as gunner on another tank as it was about to roll out on a mission in Ramadi, Iraq. During the operation, a roadside bomb explosion set fire to the front fuel cell of Vecchione’s borrowed ride.

Remarkably, every member of the crew made it through the blast without a scratch. But with the front of the vehicle engulfed in flames, they were forced to abandon it.

Under normal procedures, Vecchione would have been one of the first people to get off. But he was the last, jumping right onto another roadside bomb.

“If he’d jumped three feet to the left or three feet to the right, this wouldn’t have happened,” said Capt. Jason Irwin, the company commander, who considered his former soldier and gunner a friend. Nobody else was injured.

“He was a soldier’s soldier,” one friend said.

He addressed the possibility of his own death on his Web page. A questionnaire posted on it asks, “Goal you would like to achieve this year?”

Vecchione answered, “Making it home alive.”

To the question, “How do you want to die?” Vecchione answered, “With as little pain as possible.”

The questionnaire also asked, “Do you believe in yourself?”

“Of course,” Vecchione responded. “Who else would.”

He sorely underestimated his influence on his friends and colleagues.

“Nobody’s going to talk about the deceased badly,” his friend said, admitting that troops killed in war are sometimes lionized for their sacrifice even if they weren’t fantastic soldiers. “But Sergeant ‘Vecc’ was the kind of guy who, no matter how hard you looked, you couldn’t find anything wrong with him.”