Sgt. Jayton D. Patterson

(reprinted from the Washington Post, January 19, 2005)

Va. Marine Killed in Iraq Was 'So Close' To Returning

By Brigid Schulte
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 19, 2005; Page A15

Just one hour before the grim-faced Marines in their dress blues arrived, the family of Sgt. Jayton D. Patterson was on a high. He would be home in three weeks. He had made it through the bloody assault on Fallujah in the fall. The worst was over.

They had just opened a box of prized possessions he'd sent home early. They fingered the Bible he took with him everywhere, the photos of his 15-month-old daughter, Claire Michelle, worn with dust and love.

His wife, Stephanie, had been feeling such relief. She had bought him jeans and sweaters and had packed them in a bag to take to the airport when he was due home, just after the Iraqi elections. She bought tickets for a Caribbean cruise to celebrate his return and their second anniversary.

Then, as she was returning from an errand, something simple like getting photos developed, she saw the Marines on her front porch in the rural southern Virginia town of Wakefield. She collapsed on the lawn.

"I knew what they were about," she said.

Patterson, 26, had gone on patrol in Iraq's Babil province and stepped on a land mine about 5 a.m. Saturday. The Marines tried to tell his wife that they hadn't found all of his body parts yet. But her mind couldn't believe it.

"He's been gone so long, I really wanted to see his face," she said. "But they're telling me it's going to have to be a closed casket."

How strange, she thinks, for a man she grew to love because of his confidence, his seeming invincibility. Just before he joined the Marine Corps, he dyed his hair bright yellow and had a Superman "S" tattooed on his arm. His school friends had called him "Bible Boy." He'd even studied briefly to be a minister before deciding he needed maturity. His friends in Iraq called him John Wayne.

He had written long letters home, confessing that he'd had to kill a 14-year-old boy who had run at him and his men with two fistfuls of grenades.

Just Friday night, Patterson had called his parents, one of the rare phone calls for a rifleman mostly out on foot patrol in a hostile country. He told them that he loved them -- that America was doing good things over there, building schools, fixing water systems, bringing electricity.

"He talked about how, knock wood, his patrol was the only one that hadn't lost anyone" from an improvised explosive, his father, Frank Patterson, said. "The next day, he was killed by one."

These days, Patterson's doorbell in Sedley, near Wakefield, rings constantly as friends bring food and stories about his eldest son, who loved the outdoors, hunting, his church and a good joke.

"He was so close," he said. "He was so close."

Now, Stephanie is signing papers. She's tracking down Jayton's Marine buddies from when he served in the White House honor guard. She's thinking only as far into the future as the funeral. She's pushing the Marine Corps to fly his body home. "I told him . . . I was going to be there to meet him at the airport when he came home," she said. "And I will."

Patterson's was the 36th U.S. death of 39 in Iraq this year, No. 1,359 of 1,362 Americans in the war.

"Now the war has touched us all," said Jane Stephenson, a middle school teacher whose class wrote letters to Patterson.

She said one of her students, 12-year-old Meagan Smith, burst into inconsolable tears yesterday when she heard of his death. She had written him a poem that he kept in his pocket. It said:

Be strong young soldiers. Be brave young men

Fight the long battle and live 'til the end.

Staff researcher Bobbye Pratt contributed to this report.