 Ledger - Enquirer -- BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Army Sgt. Marquees A. Quick was a scout in Iraq - one of the first troops to move into a new, dangerous area. It was tough work, and he didn't tell relatives much about it.
On Tuesday, his family gathered for the funeral of the 28-year-old soldier, killed Aug. 19 in Ramadi, Iraq, when his unit came under a grenade attack on a mission.
Quick, a 1996 graduate of Huffman High School, served seven months in Iraq. Family members would ask him about the conflict, but he tried to shield them as much as possible, according to grandmother Lois Nipson, 85.
"There are so many things he wouldn't talk about. I would say, `How is it over there, Marquees?' and he said, `Grandma, it's not that good,'" Nipson said. "I would continue to try to get things out of him, but he wouldn't tell me. He would say, `Grandma, don't worry. I'll be all right.'"
During a break from Iraq after his first assignment, Quick returned home obviously troubled, his wife said.
"Marq pretty much doesn't cry," Alashia Quick told The Birmingham News. "But there was so much bad stuff going on, he started crying."
Even then, he tried to reassure his wife.
"I was worried," she said. "But he just said, `It's OK.'"
Quick's mother, Linda Rawlings, said her son became interested in a military career when he was in high school and joined ROTC. His life's path soon started to take shape, as did his interests.
"On our first date, he pretty much asked me how I feel about the military," Alashia Quick said. "He knew he needed someone supportive and understanding because being a military wife is not easy."
She last spoke with him two days before he was killed. In that conversation, Alashia Quick said, her husband told her of a foreboding dream, but it wasn't about his duty in Iraq.
"He told me his bad dream was about me," she said. "I asked him what it was about, but he didn't say. He just said as long as I was OK, he's OK."
Although there was concern a protester might demonstrate at the funeral, no one protested the service. The Patriot Guard Riders, a motorcycle group that serves as a buffer between family and protesters, received permission from Quick's mother to attend.
They were parked outside the St. James Baptist Church in the Brown Springs community until Quick's wife arrived and asked them to leave.
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L. Bartoletti
Iraq '05, ARNG