Army Sgt. Thomas D. Robbins, a 1994 Bethlehem High School graduate who died in Iraq, was laid to rest Wednesday amid the snowy fields of Saratoga National Cemetery.
It would have been his 28th birthday.
The flag-draped casket was borne by Army soldiers from Fort Drum and Fort Lewis, Wash. The private burial was conducted with full military honors under a windless, azure sky.
In a morning service at Our Savior's Lutheran Church in Colonie, Joseph Robbins called his late brother "a noble soldier fallen. ... His spirit is home."
Robbins was killed Feb. 9 in an explosion in the Mosul region of northwest Iraq. He was a cavalry scout with the Stryker Brigade's 1st Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment based at Fort Lewis, near Tacoma, Wash.
He had been stationed in Iraq for less than three months.
Robbins was providing security for the demolition of confiscated rocket-propelled grenades and mortar rounds when one or more detonated. The explosion occurred as soldiers were loading the ordnance onto a truck for disposal at a demolition site.
Also killed in the explosion was National Guard Sgt. Elijah Tai Wah Wong, 42, of Mesa, Ariz., who was assigned to the 363rd Explosive Ordnance Company. Five other soldiers were injured.
Army officials are ruling the explosion an accident, although an investigation is under way.
Robbins was the 535th U.S. service member to have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq 11 months ago.
The funeral cortege included Robbins' widow, Gina Robbins, who carried their 5-month-old daughter, Marisa. The couple lived near Fort Lewis.
"We shouldn't have to be here today," the Rev. Mark Mueller of Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Delmar, said in his sermon. "Wives should not lose their husbands. Children should not lose their fathers."
Mueller described Robbins' boyhood in Delmar as one marked by a love of art, music and nature. His parents would be looking for their son and "find him laying in the yard, gazing up at the sky," Mueller said.
Mueller described Robbins' selflessness, continually placing his love of family and country before his own needs. "He lived and died helping others, true to himself," Mueller said.
Mueller told of a group of schoolchildren near Detroit who wrote to dozens of soldiers in the Stryker Brigade. Only Robbins took the time to write back.
"That was Thomas, a rare person," Mueller said.
Mueller read a eulogy written by Joseph Robbins, who praised his brother's "bravery, reverence and sense of duty. ... Our family is now very small indeed."
The Robbins family buried a daughter, Sarah, who died in 1988 shortly before her 10th birthday from a form of ovarian cancer that is extremely rare in children.
Another sibling, Deborah, is a social worker in Massachusetts.
Their parents, Charlene Robbins and Douglas Robbins, have been divorced for a decade. They raised their children in Delmar, where they attended Bethlehem public schools.
In high school, Robbins played soccer, ran track and played trumpet in the band. He earned an associate degree in environmental sciences at Morrisville State College. He studied at the State University College of Agriculture and Technology at Cobleskill, but did not finish. In the Army, he had resumed his college studies and was two credits short of a bachelor's degree.
About 150 mourners sang "America the Beautiful" as the recessional hymn and finished the full four verses.
The final verse begins: "O beautiful for patriot dream / That sees beyond the years."
Date published: 2/13/2004
An Army scout--whose grandmother, uncles and cousin live in the Fredericksburg area--was killed in Iraq on Monday after an explosion of Iraqi ammunition.
Sgt. Thomas D. Robbins, 27, was near Mosul in northern Iraq, where a large collection of rocket-propelled grenades and mortar rounds had been confiscated from the Iraqis, according to the Department of Defense.
As he and other soldiers were moving the unexploded ordnance to a demolition site, one of the rounds exploded, said Joe Hitt, an Army spokesman at Fort Lewis, Wash., where Robbins was based.
The explosion killed Robbins and an Arizona National Guardsman and wounded five others. The incident is listed as a "non-hostile ordnance accident" on the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count site, but is being investigated by the Department of Defense.
Robbins grew up in the Delmar area of New York state, southwest of Albany, where he played high-school soccer, ran track and was an active member of the local Boy Scouts, according to a story in the Albany Times Union.
Many of his relatives still live in the Albany area.
Robbins also has family members in Spotsylvania, Stafford and King George counties, including his 90-year-old paternal grandmother. His uncle, David Robbins, politely declined an interview, saying the family needs to grieve privately.
The Army sergeant is the fourth person with connections to the Fredericksburg area to die in Iraq since July. As of yesterday, 538 American service members have been killed since military operations began almost a year ago.
Robbins leaves behind a wife and 5-month-old daughter in Washington state, his parents and a brother in the Albany area, and a sister in Massachusetts.
He joined the Army in 1998 and spent a year in Korea before he was assigned to Fort Lewis in spring 2000. He worked as a calvary scout with the Stryker brigade's 1st Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment.
The Strykers are state-of-the art vehicles that provide more protection than Humvees and trucks, but can move faster and easier than tanks, said Capt. Tim Beninato, a public affairs officer at Fort Lewis. The Strykers can carry up to 11 infantrymen and move as fast as 60 miles per hour.
Calvary scouts such as Robbins "are the eyes and the ears of the Stryker brigade," Beninato said. Just like the scouts of old days, they go out, ahead of the troops, and try to pinpoint the location of the enemy, he said.
The 3,500 soldiers who made up the Stryker brigade from Fort Lewis were the first to try out the new armored vehicles, Beninato said. They worked almost nonstop for two years to get out all the bugs and to develop operating procedures.
"They're probably one of the best trained brigades in the United States Army because of all the training they've done in the past two years," Beninato said.
Robbins was the fifth soldier from Fort Lewis to die in Iraq. "It's very much a loss," the captain said. "Any time there's a loss of a soldier, it's like losing a member of the family."
Other casualties of the Iraqi conflict with ties to the Fredericksburg area are:
Army Staff Sgt. David Parson, 30, who was shot seven times in July as his vehicle approached Baghdad. The father of three had married into the prominent Belman family of Stafford County.
Army Regimental Sgt. Maj. Cornell W. Gilmore, 45, of North Stafford and Chief Warrant Officer 5 Sharon T. Swartworth, 43, who spent weekends at a summer home at Lake Anna, died in November when their Black Hawk helicopter was shot down in Iraq. Both worked for the Judge Advocate General Corps at the Pentagon and were on a brief mission in Iraq.
Date published: 2/13/2004
