Philip Allan Dodson Jr

Tuesday, December 06 2005 @ 08:08 AM EST

Macon Telegraph -- A Forsyth man was one of three members of the 48th Brigade Combat Team killed in a vehicle accident Friday in Iraq, his father said Sunday.

Spc. Philip Allan Dodson Jr. was killed in an accident about 3 p.m. Friday near Ali Air Base in southern Dhi Quar province south of Baghdad, according to the Army. But it provided no more details, and it had not released the victims' names by Sunday night.

Phil Dodson Sr. of Macon said his son's wife, Melissa, was informed of her husband's death Sunday morning. Dodson, 42, is also survived by his daughter, Allison, his mother, Janice Hughes, and a brother, Jeffrey Dodson.

He was last home for a two-week leave in August for his daughter's 16th birthday.

"My daughter-in-law was out Saturday evening, but when she returned home her neighbors told her an Army car had been to her house," Dodson Sr. said. "They came back about 8 a.m. (Sunday) and told her Phil had been killed in an accident."

The elder Dodson, a staff editor at The Telegraph, said the family had received few details about the accident other than that those killed were in a Humvee that had overturned. He said he didn't know if the accident happened on a combat mission.

He said his son was a corrections officer at the Al Burrus Training Center in Forsyth, where he had worked for about 10 years. He had been in the National Guard for four or five years and had previously served in the active duty military.

Dodson Jr., assigned to Headquarters Company of the 148th Support Battalion, had been stationed at Camp Stryker near Baghdad International Airport, but he had recently been reassigned to a forward mobile unit, his father said.

"I'm not sure where that was," he said. "I hadn't talked to him since the move."

Dodson Sr. said his son's primary duty was repairing generators but that he had volunteered to be a machine gunner on convoys three days a week. He was recognized as his unit's Soldier of the Month in July.

"My son was a very gung-ho person. He would get up on his foot locker to recite the soldiers' creed and wake up the young guys," his father said.

Funeral arrangements are pending.

Dodson's death marked the second Middle Georgia casualty in Iraq in the past week. A Marine corporal from Macon, William G. Taylor, was killed in combat in Fallujah, Iraq, on Wednesday, according to the U.S. Marine Corps. Taylor, 27, and another Marine died in a gun battle.

According to the Associated Press, at least 2,127 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003. The three deaths Friday bring the number of 48th Brigade members who have died in Iraq to 21.

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