January 13, 2006

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  The war has reached out and touched my extended family. Below is an article posted earlier on my cousin, Jenny LaBouff’s site. Douglas A LaBouff & Michael R. Martinez

  Wednesday, January 11 2006 @ 05:53 AM EST Contributed by: River97 Views: 167 www.gazette.com — One of the three Fort Carson soldiers killed in a helicopter crash Saturday in Iraq volunteered to be there. All of them were due home as soon as February, when the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment is scheduled to begin returning to Fort Carson. Capt. Michael Martinez, 43, Maj. Douglas LaBouff, 36, and 1st Lt. Joseph D. deMoors, 36, were killed when the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter they were flying in crashed outside Tal Afar, Iraq, just before midnight Saturday. There were 12 Americans on board the helicopter — eight soldiers and four civilians. The Army has not determined the cause of the crash. There were no survivors. LaBouff, originally from California, was hoping to become a professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., when the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment’s commander, Col. H.R. McMaster, asked him to serve as its top intelligence officer. He agreed, going to Iraq with the 3rd ACR when it headed back in March for its second combat tour. Martinez, an Army attorney with the Judge Advocate General, also went to Iraq with the 3rd ACR, heading overseas in November for his first deployment in his 16 years in the military. It was supposed to be a short trip — his wife, Kelly, was counting the days until his return, Feb. 18. She woke Saturday knowing her husband wasn’t coming home. “I’d had a terrible dream, and I just knew,” she said. “You hear this all the time — but I had a terrible gut feeling.” While her husband was deployed, Martinez took comfort in the photographs he posted on a Web site for friends and relatives: her husband smiling in the sun outside his work tent; a group of children clowning for the camera in a Tal Afar market; a photo of the Black Hawk helicopter he traveled in, with a caption that reads, “Not a bad way to see the country.” “It’s difficult for me to look at him,” Martinez said. “What to say about the love of my life? He didn’t just like his job — he really loved it. He believed in the cause and believed in what he was doing.” Martinez, of Missouri, served with the 24th Infantry Division at Fort Riley in Kansas and at the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth near Kansas City before being assigned to Fort Carson’s Chief of Legal Assistance and going to Iraq. “Not only was he a good soldier — he was just, and kind, and a good leader,” his wife said. “He was a wonderful father, a wonderful husband.” LaBouff chose to go to Iraq with this regiment, though his goal was to share his love of history with West Point cadets. He had followed his father, a Korean War veteran, into the Army in 1995, and had honed his skills for war with two tours in South Korea, where he gathered intelligence on the North Korean army. “I think he felt he could further contribute to the intelligence fight (in Iraq),” said a longtime friend, Capt. Robert Medina, in a telephone interview from California. “And of course he wanted to be deployed with the cavalry, he’s a cavalry trooper all the way.” LaBouff’s wife of 10 years, Karen, asked Medina to speak to the media about her husband. The job fit right into LaBouff’s lifelong drive to help others. As a high school student in California, he founded a drug-abuse prevention program. As an ROTC cadet at California State University at Fullerton, he was always coaxing underclassmen through tough training, Medina said. When LaBouff’s father died, he brought his mother to live with his family in Colorado Springs. At home, the deep-voiced, stoutly built major did his best to be a stern father. But Medina recalled the tough facade crumbled with his son and daughter. “He kind of melts when the kids are around,” Medina said. Medina, who still speaks of his friend in the present tense, said LaBouff’s family and friends are having a hard time believing the news from Tal Afar. “It’s just not real yet.” 1st Lt. Joseph D. deMoors’ family could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

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