A violent month hits home Four were teenagers. Thirty were 21 or younger. The oldest was 53. They left homes in big cities and small prairie towns and Southern hamlets to answer the call of duty in Iraq, where 103 soldiers, Marines, airmen and seamen died in October - the war's fourth-deadliest month and the worst since January 2005. On the final day of October, Sgt. 1st Class Tony L. Knier, who needed his mother's permission to join the Army at 16, returned in a casket to the coarse green hills of central Pennsylvania. His mother was there, and his widow, and dozens of relatives and friends, and stooped veterans who whispered words of comfort in his widow's ear.
Four were teenagers. Thirty were 21 or younger. The oldest was 53. They left homes in big cities and small prairie towns and Southern hamlets to answer the call of duty in Iraq, where 103 soldiers, Marines, airmen and seamen died in October - the war's fourth-deadliest month and the worst since January 2005. On the final day of October, Sgt. 1st Class Tony L. Knier, who needed his mother's permission to join the Army at 16, returned in a casket to the coarse green hills of central Pennsylvania. His mother was there, and his widow, and dozens of relatives and friends, and stooped veterans who whispered words of comfort in his widow's ear.