Staff Sgt. Travis Nelson, 41, a Cullman native who lived in Anniston, was killed when his unit was attacked by enemy forces Saturday. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, based at Fort Campbell, Ky.Tuscaloosa News -- An Alabama soldier was one of three from the 101 Airborne Division killed in small arms fire in Baghdad, the Department of Defense announced Tuesday. Staff Sgt. Travis Nelson, 41, a Cullman native who lived in Anniston, was killed when his unit was attacked by enemy forces Saturday. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, based at Fort Campbell, Ky.
His family called him kind and genuine. Those who served with him nicknamed Nelson "Old Man River." He was a soldier all the way.
"He loved everything about it," his wife, Shelly Nelson, told The Anniston Star. "That's who he was. He was a soldier. He felt it was his duty, and that's what he wanted to do - fight for our freedom."
"I know this is what he wanted to do, but it doesn't make it easier to let him go," Nelson's mother, Jeanice Galin said.
"I had just mailed his Christmas present to him Friday," she told The Cullman Times.
Nelson served in the Army from 1982 to 1992, and won the Bronze Star during operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. After leaving the Army, he worked at a Wal-Mart distribution center in Cullman, but his heart was always in the Army, his wife said.
Nelson enlisted in the National Guard in 2001. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, his unit was activated and sent to Huntsville, then the Anniston Army Depot, where he guarded the chemical weapons incinerator.
He met Shelly while working at the Depot and the two were married last year, when he also re-enlisted in the Army.
"He was just one of those good, down-to-earth people you liked the minute you saw him," said Demris Digby, Nelson's grandmother-in-law. "We all just liked him so much from the beginning."
Nelson shipped out to Iraq last September. His wife said he earned the title "Old Man River" because many of the soldiers in his unit turned to him for advice or to confide in him.
Sgt. Clarence L. Floyd Jr., 28, of Newark, N.J., and Sgt. Kenith Casica, 32, of Virginia Beach, Va., were also killed in Saturday's attack on the 101 Airborne.
Nelson's survivors include his stepdaughter, Summer Edgeworth; his brother, Mike Nelson; and sister, Tammi Bramblett.
Funeral services for Nelson, who will be buried with full military honors in Cold Water, a rural community just outside of Gadsden, are scheduled to be completed later this week. Cullman Heritage Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.