LCpl. Joseph Renehan, KIA

(reprinted from OxfordTribune.com, December 16, 2004)

Oxford native killed in action

Kyle Renehan, 21, was an air traffic controller stationed in Iraq

Kyle Joseph Renehan, a lance corporal with the U.S. Marine Corps and the son of Theresa and James Renehan of Oxford, died Thursday from injuries he suffered during "enemy action" in Iraq last week, military sources said.
Renehan, 21, died in a military hospital in Kaiserslautern, Germany. His parents and brother, Christopher -- also a Marine -- had traveled to the hospital after Renehan was transferred there.
A telephone call to the Renehan residence was not immediately returned.
Renehan, an air traffic controller whose duties supported the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit from Camp Lejeune, N.C., was based in the Babil province south of Baghdad, a Defense Department spokesman said.
The spokesman, Capt. Bruce Frame of the Marine Corps Air Station in Cherry Point, N.C., declined to issue further information on the Nov. 29 attack that injured Renehan.
"(Military authorities) are not providing any detailed information or even general information because they do not want the insurgent forces to be able to gauge how effective their tactics and procedures are," Frame said.
A 2001 graduate of Oxford Area High School, Renehan represented the school in the June 2001 Valor Bowl, a benefit football game featuring the county's top senior class players.
"He was the nicest kid you'd ever want to meet," said Dan Bonner, who was coach of the Oxford Hornets football team when Renehan transferred to the school in his junioir year, and played on the school's football team for two years.
" I know a lot of people say that, but he truly was. He wasn't the greatest athlete, and he wasn't the biggest kid or the fastest kid. But he as such a role model. He gave everything he had -- 110 percent always," Bonner said.
He joined the Marine Corps on Sept. 5, 2001, less than a week before the terror attacks that precipitated the U.S. military's involvement in Iraq.
According to news reports, about 5,000 U.S. Marines, British troops and Iraqi commandos launched an offensive in Babil province on Nov. 23 to neutralize insurgent activity.
The cluster of dusty, small towns has been a major center for such activity, and coalition forces have been repeatedly attacked by small arms fire, rockets and car bombs while in the area.
The region has become known as a "triangle of death" for the numerous attacks by Sunni Muslim insurgents and criminal gangs on Shiites, Westerners and members of the Iraqi security services.
Renehan joined the Marine Corps on Sept. 5, 2001, less than a week before the terror attacks that precipitated the U.S. military's involvement in Iraq.