Richard J. Herrema

Friday, April 28 2006 @ 06:13 AM EDT

www.newsobserver.com -- A Fort Bragg soldier with one of the Army's most elite units was killed Tuesday in a helicopter assault in Baghdad.

Sgt. 1st Class Richard J. Herrema, 27, of Hudsonville, Mich., died Tuesday when he came under small-arms fire, according to a Defense Department news release.

Another release described his last assignment as "a team member assigned to the U.S. Army Special Operations Command." Herrema, who in 2003 was made a Special Forces instructor after just four years in the Army, had a long list of qualifications, even by Special Operations standards. Friends and family declined to discuss his recent work or unit in detail.

His father, Richard Herrema of Hudsonville, said his son's unit had received information about some insurgents and mounted an attack. Herrema was the first off the chopper and was hit almost immediately. He died later at a field hospital.

Friends and relatives said he was a committed Christian. His last contact with his family was an e-mail message at Easter in which he told them he had been able to attend chapel, his father said.

His mother, Mary, said he was a pleasure to raise.

"He always was a special son, " she said. "He was the kind that saw work before you even asked him to do it."

He placed only God above his family and doted on his younger sisters, she said, doing things such as hiring a limo for their prom.

He was born in Grand Rapids, Mich., and graduated from Unity Christian High School in Hudsonville, near Grand Rapids. His high school principal, Jack Posta, said that even though Herrema had graduated in 1997, his death rocked the school.

"It's a big topic with the teachers," he said. "They all loved him.

"He was the kind of kid who didn't talk much, but when he did, you knew that he meant what he said," Posta said.

He entered the Army in January 1999, and though he hadn't been an athlete in high school, his father said that military life seemed to come naturally to him.

"As soon as he got in, he just took a liking to it and moved pretty quickly from one thing to another, always doing really well," he said.

Herrema liked to work on old cars and had taken up surfing since coming to Fort Bragg, his father said.

It was his first deployment to Iraq, and he had been eager to get there, his father said.

Instead of the usual two-man notification team from a local base, six soldiers from Fort Bragg, including some of Herrema's friends, came to Michigan to break the bad news Tuesday, he said.

Herrema was posthumously awarded a Bronze Star Medal for valor, the Defense Meritorious Service Medal and the Purple Heart.

Survivors include his parents and younger sisters, Katie and Janie Herrema.

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