A fallen soldier returns home

Michael Scusa dreamed of serving in the Army and eagerly enlisted just before graduating from Lower Cape May Regional High School four years ago.

He had been in Afghanistan for five months, after a 15-month tour in Iraq, when his base in the Hindu Kush mountains came under a ferocious attack Saturday.

About 300 insurgents knocked out an observation post before dawn, then came close to overrunning thinly manned Camp Keating during a battle that lasted for hours.

In the end, the 22-year-old Army Spec. Scusa, a former resident of Villas in Lower Township, Cape May County, and seven other U.S. soldiers were killed in the storm of machine-gun fire, mortar rounds, and rocket-propelled grenades that rained down from the mountain ridges.

The combat losses were the highest for a single day since nine U.S. troops were killed in July 2008. Making the deaths even more painful was their timing, just days before the base, 10 miles from the Pakistani border, was scheduled for closure.

Yesterday, Scusa's remains arrived at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware along with those of other soldiers.

His mother, Cynthia Woodard, 52, of Mount Holly, watched her son's flag-draped coffin carried reverently from the back of a C-17 cargo plane as soldiers saluted.

She was joined by Scusa's wife, Alyssa, who lives in Fountain, Colo., with the couple's year-old son, Connor, named after a friend of Scusa's, a soldier lost in Iraq.

Also present were Scusa's siblings, James Woodard, 27, of Elverson, Berks County; John Woodard, 30, of Philadelphia; and Susan Woodard, 34, also of Elverson.

Michael Scusa "was all about the military," said James Woodard. "That's what he wanted to do from the get-go."

"It was his calling," said John Woodard. When talking with the family, "he left a lot out because he didn't want us or Mom to worry."

Simply put, the Army "was his dream," said Lynn Stelma, who shares a house with Cynthia Woodard. "He always wanted to serve his country. He was patriotic."

Woodard kept in touch with her son via e-mail, sometimes staying up into the early-morning hours to chat, Stelma said.

"She waited up to hear from him," Stelma said. In one of their last contacts, "they talked about his birthday." He would have turned 23 on Monday.

Michael "also talked about it being hot where he was . . . ," Stelma said. His mother "felt good whenever she heard from him. It's so sad."

In Lower Township, others remembered Scusa as a "sweet" and "fun" high school youth with a serious side.

The terrorist attacks on 9/11, when Scusa was 14 years old, persuaded him to "fight for the freedoms of our country," said David Shuhart, 56, a disabled Vietnam veteran who lived with Scusa and his mother in a modest one-story home in the township's Villas section between 2000 and 2005.

Though no longer with Scusa's mother, Shuhart said he kept in touch with the young man.

"He was a good kid. He was fun to be with," Shuhart said, trying to hold back tears as he recalled "the bright spot" the boy had been for him. "Now he's a hero. . . . He's a gold star in heaven."

Shuhart said he had seen Scusa after the soldier returned from his first deployment. "He wasn't a kid no more," he said.

When the two spoke about a year and a half ago, Scusa told him that he wanted to go to Afghanistan, Shuhart said. They used to joke about how the letters usa appeared in Scusa's name, making him an "all-American kid."

"If it wasn't for people like Mike, willing to fight for our freedom so we can rest easy at night, we wouldn't have the country and the freedoms we have," Shuhart said. "He's always going to be in my heart."

A few doors away from Shuhart, 22-year-old Justin Smith spoke of growing up with Scusa.

"I never told him how much I looked up to him, kind of like a mentor," he said yesterday. "I wish I had told him when I knew him. He was a good guy."

At nearby Lower Township Regional High School, Valerie Davis taught Scusa 11th- and 12th-grade math and recalled hoping that he would take a different career path - one that was safer.

"He was always talking about joining the military, and I had hoped he would have changed his mind," Davis said. "He was such a nice, sweet kid, the kind that you cannot say enough good things about."

The high school's assistant principal, Bert Kern, agreed with Davis. Scusa was a "kid who stood out, not because he was one of the bad kids, but because he was so good," he said.

"You never like to see kids going off to war and putting themselves in harm's way," said Kern, a Vietnam-era veteran. "The military is a leg up for some kids.

"It rounds them out and provides them with opportunities they might not otherwise have," he said. "On the other hand, there is always the risk that they might not come home."

<http://www.philly.com/inquirer/world_us/20091007_A_fallen_soldier_returns_home.html>

How many more stories like these must we hear before we hold our leaders accountable for Afghanistan and Iraq?

:cry: :patriot: