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Staff Sgt. Jeremy Alexander Brown

Humvee crash kills Raleigh man in Iraq

This article appeared in the Charleston Gazette on June, 6, 2005.

By CHARLES SHUMAKER

As Staff Sgt. Jeremy Alexander Brown was preparing to leave for his second tour of duty in Iraq, he told his mother that he had a responsibility to the younger soldiers who would see war for the first time.

Brown, 26, of Mabscott, died Sunday when the Humvee he was riding in flipped over near Mosul.

He may have been talking about soldiers just eight years younger, but Brown came across as a seasoned war veteran with life-saving wartime lessons to teach, Teresa Brown recalled Tuesday evening.

She said her son was riding in the gunner's position on the Humvee Sunday and was killed instantly when it rolled on top of him and crushed him.

"We don't know how it flipped," Teresa Brown said. "Everyone says that a staff sergeant isn't supposed to be a gunner but [Jeremy] would have taken over any job and done it if his men were sick or injured."

Jeremy Brown's body will be returned to Raleigh County for burial, his mother said. A date for his funeral service has not been set. Blue Ridge Funeral Home in Beckley is in charge of arrangements.

Brown was a soldier from the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment based in Fort Carson, Colo. He was assigned to the 66th Military Intelligence Company.

He was in Iraq for most of 2003 and part of 2004, then came back to the U.S. for a year. He returned to Iraq in February of this year.

Brown's mother said he would have left the military in October 2006. She tried to get him not to go back. But he told her he had an important job to do.

"He said, 'I have to go. I have to,'" she said. "He said, 'Mom, I don't know if you realize this or not, but there are 18- and 19-year-old kids who are going to be scared. I'm a veteran. Imagine if that was me [at that age].'"

As strongly as Jeremy Brown wanted to join the military as a teenager fresh out of Woodrow Wilson High School, he wanted to leave it next year to be a dad, according to his family.

He met his wife, Rosemary, also an Iraq veteran, in Korea. They were married in January 2003, just before Jeremy began his first tour in Iraq. Tuesday was the day the couple was supposed to close on their new home in Fredericksburg, Va.

His son from a previous relationship lives in Ohio with his mother. Seth Alexander Brown shares his father's and grandfather's middle name.

Army officials visited Teresa's home Monday morning to deliver the news as family was gathering for Independence Day events. The Fourth of July is changed forever, she said.

"It will always be different," she said. "It was shocking ... one of those things you never want to deal with."

She said she was comforted to know he didn't suffer.

"He would have never wanted to be captured or shot. Or come back home missing limbs," she said.

Jeremy had two brothers. His twin, Jason, is four minutes older but admits his younger sibling was first to do everything. A friend's father, an Army recruiter, courted them both.

"He knew [the Army] wasn't for me," Jason Brown said of his brother. "But for [Jeremy], that's pretty much him. If he felt like something needed to be done, he just jumped on it and did it."

Even their father, John Alexander Brown, a Vietnam veteran with war stories to tell his sons, couldn't change Jeremy's mind when he joined the Army. The two eldest brothers got closer after their father died of cancer in 2000.

Unlike his mother, Jason said he encouraged his brother to stick the military out for another 10 years so he could retire and move on to another career.

"He told me that if it wasn't for the time away from his son he wouldn't mind spending time over there. He felt like he was doing some good over there," Jason Brown said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.