 The Morning Call -- Two days after Christmas, with his next deployment to Iraq fast approaching, Mark Baum gave his wife, Heather, the wedding ceremony she'd always wanted.
Staff Sgt. Mark C. Baum of Quakertown died Saturday shortly after he was shot in the Iraqi city of Mushada while responding to a roadside bomb attack.
They had married nearly 10 years ago in a small service before a justice of the peace. In December, they renewed their vows surrounded by their three young children in a church filled with family and friends.
''It was very important,'' Heather Baum said of the ceremony, ''just in the event that he died over there.''
Less than two months later, she's a widow.
In addition to his wife, he's survived by daughters Alexis, 6, and Kailey, 3, and a 7-month-old son, Conrad.
Baum, 32, was the first member of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard's 56th Stryker Brigade Combat Team to be killed in action since it deployed last month. He was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart and promoted to staff sergeant.
He was the 26th person with ties to the Lehigh Valley region -- and the first since June -- to have died since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began.
Baum's mother-in-law, Mary Miller, said military officials told the family he was trying to push two younger members of his unit to safety when he was shot.
''He was a hero,'' Heather Baum said. ''He was a good man.''
Baum, a member of his unit's quick reaction force, was hit around 5 a.m. by small-arms fire while responding to an improvised explosive device. He died five hours later after being airlifted to Baghdad. No other soldiers were killed or wounded.
The 4,000-strong 56th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, which has units based in Kutztown, Wilson and elsewhere in Pennsylvania, deployed to Kuwait in January for a nine-month assignment and entered Iraq this month.
The Stryker brigades are high-tech, rapid-deployment forces centered on the Army's versatile, eight-wheel Stryker armored vehicles. The 56th is the only Stryker brigade made up of National Guard units.
Baum's unit, Detachment 1, Company B, 1st Battalion, 111th Infantry Regiment, is based in Phoenixville, Chester County.
Soldiers assigned to their units' quick reaction forces know they could be heading into harm's way at a moment's notice, said Lt. Col. Chris Cleaver of the Pennsylvania Department of Military and Veterans Affairs.
Their mission is to come to the aid of fellow soldiers who have run into trouble.
''That is a very dangerous mission,'' Cleaver said. ''You know you are going into a situation with an enemy who has already attacked your forces and in many cases have already established positions.''
Bucks County officials ordered the county, state and U.S. flags to be lowered to half-staff at all county facilities. Baum worked as a corrections officer in the county prison.
A former active-duty soldier, he served tours in Iraq, Kosovo and Sinai before joining the Pennsylvania National Guard in 2005.
Heather Baum said she and her husband were both apprehensive after being notified last year that he was being sent back to Iraq.
''I was terrified,'' she said.
Miller said her son-in-law was proud of his military service.
''He believed in what he was doing,'' she said. ''He wasn't always happy with the politics -- nobody is -- but he believed in what he was doing.''
Cleaver said the Stryker Brigade has an often perilous mission.
''If there is a unit that is engaging the enemy, it is the Stryker Brigade,'' Cleaver said. ''They are there to hunt down and kill insurgents. ... They are going to be working in a challenging environment.''
Still, Cleaver said, soldiers with the Stryker Brigade have reported conditions much improved since their last deployments.
For family members of those in the brigade, Baum's death brings the danger their loved ones face into stark relief, said Deborah O'Connor, president of the family readiness group for Kutztown-based Company C, 1st Battalion, 111th Infantry.
''I was relieved when my husband called,'' O'Connor said. ''I'm worried about all of them ... Every single soldier's family is on my mind 24/7. We are all one family. ... Every single man and woman there or in Afghanistan are putting their lives on the line for their country. Not everyone realizes this.''
Amanda Pueyes, an Army Family Assistance Center specialist whose husband is serving with the Stryker Brigade as a medic, said she's heard a variety of emotions from other soldiers' family members after hearing of Baum's death.
''It has brought the war closer to home again,'' she said.
At the Baum home, family and friends were trying to help Heather and her three children cope Monday afternoon.
Miller said Alexis, the family's oldest child, has been asking questions.
'''Why did they kill my daddy?''' the girl has asked, Miller said. ''' I want my daddy.'''
Heather Baum said her husband was always eager to both play with his children and handle the more draining tasks of parenthood, such as changing diapers or going to them when they woke up in the middle of the night.
''He was a great father,'' she said.
Funeral arrangements are on hold pending the return of Baum's body from Iraq.
Photo: Heather Baum, right, is hugged by her mother Mary Miller of Telford, who holds Heather's daughter Mailey, 3, in Heather's home in Quakertown. Heather talked about her husband Mark Baum, who was killed in Iraq on Saturday morning.
==Another news story==
Delco Times --
Last fall we spent a lot of time detailing the preparation of the 56th Stryker Brigade Combat Team as they prepared for a deployment in Iraq.
It is dangerous duty.
Yesterday, we learned all too well just how dangerous.
The Pentagon confirmed that a member of the Pennsylvania National Guard unit had been killed in action in Iraq.
Staff Sgt. Mark Baum, from Quakertown, Bucks County, was killed by small arms fire as he responded to word of an improvised explosive device explosion in Mushada, Iraq.
Baum was 32 years old. He was married and had three small kids. He was a Bucks County corrections officer. But he still felt the need to serve his country. That’s why he signed up for National Guard duty. It was that sense of service that led him to Iraq.
Baum’s death was the first fatality for the 56th Stryker Brigade, which arrived in Iraq last month for a nine-month deployment.
We talked to several Delaware County men who are members of the Stryker Brigade, which is based in Phoenixville.
Lt. Mark O’Hanlon, the leader of the 700-man unit, is from Nether Providence. Like Baum, he also left another life behind, one that includes a wife and kids.
Last summer, when we interviewed O’Hanlon about the dangers he and his men would face in Iraq, he made some prescient comments.
“There is a lot of concern about IEDs,” he said. “That is the No. 1 mechanism for the enemy to injure or kill my soldiers.”
Today those words haunt.
Do not forget the men of the 56th Stryker Brigade and the dangerous mission in which they are involved.
Today we offer a salute to Staff Sgt. Mark Baum, a true citizen soldier who gave his life protecting the rights and lifestyle so many of us take for granted.
==Another news story==
Philadelphia Inquirer --
He had three small children, a good job, a home in a comfortable Bucks County town. Still, he was willing to go back to war.
Two days after Christmas, Staff Sgt. Mark C. Baum, 32, of Quakertown, a corrections officer at the Bucks County prison, renewed his wedding vows with his wife, Heather. Hardly two weeks later, he headed off for nine months of combat duty in Iraq with his company from the Pennsylvania National Guard.
At 5 a.m. Saturday, in an attack from small-arms fire, Baum was severely wounded. He was carried by helicopter to a U.S. military hospital near Baghdad. He died there about 10 a.m., the Guard said yesterday.
Maj. Gen. Jessica Wright, commander of the state Guard, called it "truly a sad day."
"There are no words for the loss we feel," she said in a statement from Fort Indiantown Gap.
Baum's death marked the first fatality for the 56th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, a 4,000-member unit that represents the Pennsylvania Guard's largest overseas deployment since World War II.
The brigade arrived in the Taji area north of Baghdad last month and is expected home around September. Officially, it isn't to take over its sector of Iraq from a Hawaii-based Army brigade until today. Already, it has had a death and at least one unrelated combat injury.
Since 9/11, the Pennsylvania Guard has lost 28 soldiers in Iraq and five in Afghanistan.
The Guard reported that Baum had been with a quick-reaction force that raced to the scene of a roadside bomb explosion near Mushada, Iraq.
He was shot at that site. No other soldier was hurt during the incident, the Guard said.
Col. Marc Ferraro, leader of the 56th Brigade, said: "Staff Sgt. Baum was a dedicated, professional soldier who loved his family and his country. We send out our heartfelt condolences to his family. He will be deeply missed."
Formerly an active-duty soldier, Baum had served a previous tour of duty in Iraq. He also was a member of peacekeeping forces in Kosovo and the Sinai Peninsula.
Spec. Brian Mandes of Jennersville, a groomsman at Baum's marriage celebration on Dec. 27, said that Baum had missed the camaraderie of being with troops after he left the active Army.
That was why he joined the Guard in 2005, though he knew there was a chance he might be ordered again to Iraq.
"His wife didn't want him to join up, but he missed doing something," said Mandes, a fellow Iraq veteran who was held back this time because of an injured back.
Baum and his wife had two daughters, Alexis, 6, and Kailey, 4, and a son, C.J., 7 months. Yesterday was Alexis' birthday.
"He didn't want to leave his kids, but he was enthusiastic to go," Mandes said.
Baum was a member of a Phoenixville detachment of the First Battalion of the 111th Infantry. Several of his Guard friends were there when he and his wife renewed their vows at a church in Souderton and then had a party in Lansdale, Mandes said.
Neither Baum's wife nor his parents, Howard and Debra Baum of Morgantown, were available for comment yesterday.
Baum was a guard on the 2-to-10 p.m. shift and had been at the prison in Doylestown for about a year when his unit was called up for pre-Iraq training in September.
Brendan Triplett, a guard at the prison who spent most of yesterday with Baum's family, said: "They're taking it as well as can be expected. They have a lot of support from the community, from their family, from here at the prison - and especially from the National Guard."
Spec. Matthew Shuck of Pottstown, a guardsman based in Plymouth Meeting, said he and Baum had become friends because of their common history as members of the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y. He called Baum a good leader.
"He was a very good NCO who cared for his soldiers," Shuck said.
Baum, who had been eligible for promotion from sergeant to staff sergeant, was awarded the higher rank upon his death. |
