ANTIOCH, IL, USA
U.S. Marines
SGT, C CO, 3D AAV BN, (RCT-7, I MEF FWD), 1ST MAR DIV, CAMP PENDLETON, CA
HADITHAH, IRAQ 04/28/2006
A 31-year-old U.S. Marine from northern Illinois was killed in Iraq when the Humvee he was riding in was struck by a bomb. Sgt. Edward G. Davis III of Antioch was one of three soldiers killed in the attack on Friday in Iraq’s Al Anbar province, according to the Defense Department. Davis was assigned to 3rd Assault Amphibian Battalion, 1st Marine Division, which is stationed at Camp Pendleton, Calif.
In a family full of men named Eddie, Marine Sgt. Edward Davis III was still one of a kind, his sister said.
“He was a funny, funny guy,” Rachael Rodriguez of Winthrop Harbor said Wednesday about her brother, a former Antioch resident who attended Warren Township High School in Gurnee in the early 1990s and is one of six family members named Edward. “Eddie could always make people laugh. He had a great sense of humor and the biggest dimples,” she said. “And he just loved his family and his kids so much.”
He joined the Marines in 1999 and relatives say he volunteered for duty in Iraq earlier this year. About a week before he died, he ran into a 24-year-old cousin in Iraq who is also a Marine, Rodriguez said. “They got a chance to talk for about an hour and a half,” she said. “I think myself, personally, I had a false sense of security (about Davis) because my cousin was on his second trip to Iraq. “I guess I thought because he had been safe there, it probably wasn’t as bad as they were saying. I thought they were helping more than fighting,” she said.
Rodriguez said her family is trying to come to terms with Davis’ death. “The next couple days are going to be really hard,” she said Wednesday. “But I brought copies of all my pictures of Eddie, and we’re all telling stories. We’re trying to remember the good times and not focus on the tragedy.”
Davis attended Warren Township High School in Gurnee. He is the third alum of the school to die in Iraq since the war began. Other survivors include a wife and three children.