Cody J. Eggleston

Cody Eggleston had been married only a few months when he was shipped off to Iraq in September. The 21-year-old couldn’t wait to return to his wife, Karie.

"Baby, I miss you so much," he wrote in an e-mail in October. "It sucks, not being able to fall asleep with you on the line, not being able to talk to you for several hours every day. It just destroys me inside."

Less than a month after Pfc. Eggleston began facing combat in Iraq, he was wounded in an Oct. 16 mortar attack northeast of Baghdad. He died of his wounds on Oct. 24 in Bethesda Naval Medical Center in Maryland.

Raised in Redmond and nearby Crooked River Ranch, he joined the Army after graduating from high school in Eugene, where his mother lives. Though Eggleston scored highly in Army aptitude tests, he volunteered for the infantry because he wanted to be on the front lines.

He left for Iraq on Sept. 18, after marrying in June.

"We will be a wonderful family," Eggleston assured Karie. "Nothing will come between us."

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