AL.COM -- ALICEVILLE, Ala. (AP) — An Aliceville National Guardsman, who died from injuries he suffered in Iraq during a roadside bombing, will be buried after a funeral service Friday with military honors.

Mississippi Army National Guard Staff Sgt. Tommy S. Little, 45, died Monday from injuries suffered in an April 19 attack that wounded four others. Little's leg,ankle and arm were broken, and he received puncture wounds to his shoulder and chest, according to the Army incident report.

Little was flown from Iraq to Germany and then to a hospital near San Antonio, Texas. Initial reports from Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston held out hope that he might recover.

"But when I heard they had blown a hole in his lung, I kind of knew that would be it," his mother, Luedella Little, said Tuesday. "I just had a feeling"

She told The Tuscaloosa News that her son had joined the National Guard out of high school, and he planned to stay in it as long as he was eligible.

"He loved the Guard, and he loved serving in the Army," she said. "But sometimes, I didn't want him to keep serving, and I would have put him over my knee to make him stop if I could have. But he was a grown man doing what he wanted to do."

The Guard soldier also worked at the Aliceville Cotton Mill for 20 years before it closed. A veteran of Desert Storm assignments in Kuwait and Iraq in 1991, he was a member of the second battalion of the 114th Field Artillery that is based in Columbus, Miss.

After funeral services Friday at the Aliceville National Guard Armory, Little will be buried at Cedar Grove Baptist Church Cemetery in the Old Memphis community near the Mississippi line.