Tribute to Fallen Soldier

TRIBUTE TO A FALLEN SOLDIER:  Back to Main Page |  (read original article here)

(YANKTON, SD) These days America's military eyes are on Afghanistan. Five years ago all eyes were on Iraq, where in 2005 a roadside bomb tore through a Yankton National Guard patrol, killing three men. Tonight, one family remembers their fallen soldier.

Sgt. First Class Rich Schild Celebrated his 40th birthday in Iraq. That was November 29, 2005. But only days later, on December 4, Rich's patrol was hit by a roadside bomb. Rich's older brother, Brooks Schild, was in the same unit and remembers driving up on the scene.

"On the way there I'm like, 'Don't let it be Rich, don't let it be Rich, don't let it be Rich,'" says Brooks. "Everybody's a brother there, and I didn't want it to be anybody who was hit. We just knew that there was, that it was pretty bad and we saw smoke on approach, you know, and two vehicles burning pretty badly."

Brooks didn't find out until a couple of hours later that his brother Rich had been killed.

"It's softer to say... people say 'accident', and, um, and that's okay, but it wasn't an accident, you know, so... I was there and let me tell you, it was deliberate," says Brooks.

Rich was a husband. He and his wife, Kay, had been married for 15 years at the time. It would have been 20 this year. "We talk about him every day, if not a hundred times a day, I bet, we say his name. Just like he was here," says Kay.

Their daughter Keely was 6, their son Kolby only 5. "We used to play together, and he always used to take us places," says Keely, now 11. "It's tough without a Dad because like, everybody else has one and you don't."

Keely wrote a poem about her Dad. "It says 'My hero. My hero is brave and fearful. When I think of him I see red, white and blue. He is my soldier. He is Rich,'" says Keely.

"And I'm proud of him for doing what he did because he loved it so much," says Kay.

But he paid the ultimate price.

"Yeah, it's tough. Every day, tough," says Brooks.

"I just want people to remember him the way he was," says Kay.

As the husband and son, father and brother he forever will be.

There are plans for a brief tribute to Sgt. First Class Richard Schild on the Nancy Grace Show, which airs on CNN's Headline News Channel. That tribute is set for February 15 at 7:55 pm Central Standard Time.