i am sorry for your loss

my thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends of lance corporal kurt e. denchen. i am so very sorry for your loss.

Charlie Company Marine Killed In Fallujah
By JESSE HAMILTON Courant Staff Writer August 8 2006

The price Charlie Company is paying for its mission in the heart of Fallujah now has a name: Kurt E. Dechen. After months of close calls and Purple Hearts, the Plainville-based Marines lost one of their own in Iraq last week. The lance corporal from Vermont fell under insurgent gunfire.His body is in Dover, Del., now. That's where the military prepares its dead for the final trips to their hometowns. In this case, it's Springfield, Vt., where Dale and Richard Dechen wait in the netherworld between the knock last week on their front door and the homecoming of their son, Kurt.The big Marine was in the 4th Platoon of Charlie Company, one of the platoons living in an old school administration building in downtown Fallujah, where The Courant embedded with the Marines for more than a month. The Connecticut-based Marines - about 200 of them - are the only U.S. troops living inside the city that was once controlled by thousands. The days have swung dramatically between sun-baked boredom and the attacks of insurgents. Mortars. Rocket-propelled grenades. Roadside bomb ambushes. And gunfire.While much of the world has turned its eyes to the bloodbath of sectarian killings in Baghdad, Al Anbar Province - with its violent urban pairing of Fallujah and Ramadi - sends a relentless stream of U.S. troops to combat hospitals and to mortuary services. ............