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Marine Lance Cpl. Robert T. Mininger
21, of Sellersville, Pa.; assigned to 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, Regimental Combat Team 8, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C.; died June 6 of wounds sustained in an explosion while conducting combat operations in Fallujah, Iraq. Also killed was Lance Cpl. Jonathan L. Smith.
Pennsylvania Marine killed in Iraq
Associated Press
SELLERSVILLE, Pa. — A Marine from Bucks County died Monday in Iraq from wounds received in an explosion, the Defense Department said Wednesday.
Lance Cpl. Robert T. Mininger, 21, based at Camp Lejeune, N.C., had been sent to Iraq in January.
Family members in Sellersville said military officers told them that Mininger was on patrol near Fallujah, an insurgent stronghold near Baghdad, when his Humvee hit an improvised explosive device.
Mininger’s job was to search for roadside bombs, and he had told family members that the Humvee had been hit with shrapnel several times before, said his father, Tom Mininger.
Mininger played football at Pennridge High School. After graduating in 2002, he enrolled in Montgomery County Community College as a computer engineering major but soon switched to criminal justice, with the intention of joining the CIA, FBI or Secret Service, his father said.
“Knowing that just a four-year degree wasn’t going to open as many doors as possible, he felt that military service would be greatly to his advantage,” Tom Mininger said.
After speaking with recruiters from the Army, Navy and Marines, Bob Mininger decided the “Marine Corps was the only way he would go. Anything else would not be quite as hard as he wanted,” Tom Mininger said. “He wanted it to be the ultimate, and he felt the Marine Corps was the ultimate.”
Mininger, who, his father said, kept himself in top physical condition, reported for basic training on June 7, 2004.
“That became his driving force and love, the Marine Corps,” his father said.
Mininger was assigned to 3rd Battalion, Regimental Combat Team-8, 2nd Marine Division at Camp Lejeune.
Funeral arrangements were incomplete but his father said Mininger will likely be buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
In addition to his father, Mininger is survived by his mother and a brother.
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Condolences :
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Prayers & Condolences For:
Robert T. Mininger
BY acidburnny on Jun 25, 2005 | |  | Freedom Isn't Free
I watched the flag pass by one day.
It fluttered in the breeze
A young soldier saluted it, and then
He stood at ease.
I looked at him in uniform
So young, so tall, so proud
With hair cut square and eyes alert
He'd stand out in any crowd.
I thought how many men like him
Had fallen through the years.
How many died on foreign soil?
How many mothers' tears?
How many Pilots' planes shot down?
How many foxholes were soldiers' graves?
No Freedom isn't free
I heard the sound of taps one night,
When everything was still.
I listened to the bugler play
And felt a sudden chill.
I wondered just how many times
That taps had meant "Amen"
When a flag had draped a coffin
of a brother or a friend.
I thought of all the children,
Of the mothers and the wives,
Of fathers, sons and husbands
With interrupted lives.
I thought about a graveyard at the
bottom of the sea
Of unmarked graves in Arlington.....
No -- Freedom isn't free!!
...Cadet Major Kelly Strong
Air Force Junior ROTC
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