Cpl. Raleigh C. Smith

Raleigh Smith was a zany kid who made a small town laugh and later, as a soldier, became troubled by the fighting that eventually took his life. "He had real mixed feelings about Iraq," said his mother, Gail Smith. "He knew he had a duty, but when he came home the first time, he said he never wanted to go back there again." Smith, 21, of Troy, Mont., died Dec. 23 in a hostile attack while on patrol. He was stationed at Camp Pendleton. Former teacher Terry Herman said many in Troy knew Smith as the kid who would strap on roller blades, tie a cape across his back and take to the streets with a garbage-can lid for a shield and a wooden sword. When Herman invited Smith to speak to her sixth-graders while home on leave in May, she said he told her students that he worried about his brother, who is slated to also go to Iraq in March. His mother has asked the military to reconsider sending her older son, Ramsey. Herman recalled that Smith later told her about finding bodies of women and children in demolished apartment buildings. "After he talked to the kids he told me in private that he was having nightmares," he said.