Army Sgt. Gabriel Guzman

Remember Our Heroes

Army Sgt. Gabriel Guzman, 25, of Hornbrook, Calif.

Sgt. Guzman was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, N.C.; died March 8, 2008 in Orgun E, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when his vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device in Gholam Haydar Kala, Afghanistan.

San Jose Mercury News - Sgt. Gabriel Guzman, 25, of Hornbrook, Calif., died March 8 at Orgun E, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when his vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device in Gholam Haydar Kala, Afghanistan.

He was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, N.C.

Anni Watson had been in labor for 21 hours when the officers showed up at her hospital room door with news that her brother, Army Sgt. Gabriel Guzman, formerly of Concord, had died Saturday in Afghanistan. His Humvee had run over an improvised explosive device.

The 27-year-old screamed at the officers. Then she kicked them out of her Sacramento hospital room.

"I freaked," said Watson. "I was crying and I said, 'How dare you? Don't say sorry to me when you don't know me. You kept him longer than you were supposed to. He's supposed to be home by now.' "

The officers had come to notify her mother, Shelley Tucker, who was in the hospital room, too. Watson said they all cried - her husband, her mother and her.

An hour later, Jordan Lucy Enelia Watson was born. If she had been a boy, he would have been named Gabriel Christopher.

Guzman, who was so close with his sister that they had a code language and nicknames that only they knew, died on Saturday. He was 25. He was supposed to come home last July, but the tour extensions added up. In all, he served 24 months in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Though his hometown is listed as Hornbrook, in Siskiyou County, he lived for 10 years - his adolescent and teenage years - in Concord. He went to Oak Grove Middle School and Concord High School, then took classes at Diablo Valley College before joining the Army at 21 and shipping out to Iraq shortly thereafter.

He has a 7-year-old daughter, Angela Haley Guzman, who lives in Concord with her mother. Watson said the girl, who has Down syndrome, was the light of her brother's life and much of the reason he joined the Army.

"He thought it would put him on a good, adult path, and that he could come back when it was all over and take good care of her," Watson said.

"When he got back, we all - me, my husband, my son and the baby - were going to move to Concord or Pleasant Hill with him," said Watson, a Sacramento resident and college student.

"It's where he called home."

Guzman had planned to go back to school and study kinesiology. He had always been into health and fitness, she said.

In the minutes after learning of her brother's death, Watson tried to focus on her baby girl. She didn't want the sadness radiating from her into her daughter. When she left the hospital, that's when it started.

"It's those little windows you get when you're alone," she said Thursday afternoon. "That's when the memories come pouring back."

Scab. It was the goofball nickname she gave her brother when they were kids. She can't explain why, but that's what keeps slipping into her mind during those idle moments right before sleep or when she's looking at herself in the bathroom mirror.

"He was goofy," she said. "We were goofy together. He was the one person who got me."

He couldn't call home often, but he did keep in touch through e-mail and his Myspace page.

Tucker, who lives in Mexico but has been in California waiting for her grandchild's birth, said the last communication she had with her son was via computer.

"Don't trip, mom," he wrote on her Myspace page, responding to her worry. He hadn't written, he explained, because he hadn't had the chance. Not because he was in danger.

Tucker wrote him back on March 6, two days before he died.

Watson said the last time she talked to him on the phone, he said he no longer had to go out on patrol, which meant safer times. The last communication she had was an e-mail on March 1, the day Jordan was due.

"Happy due date," he wrote.

Now, he crops up in the funniest places, she said. Her eight-year-old son mimics him - specifically the "Eich!" karate noise Guzman often made when playing with him.

"He was a very inspirational, dignified person," Watson said. "Some people said he was *censored*y, but I wouldn't say that - he never upset me or made me mad. He was the type who would always take the time to listen to you, even if he didn't agree."

He loved martial arts and gambling. He wasn't a fan of R&B or rap - didn't know the difference between the two, he says on his Myspace page - but loved Metallica.

"I have forgotten what it is to have a normal life," he wrote on his Myspace page.

"I walk the path laid before me for now. Soon I will choose where that path leads. I have had some hard lessons in my life. After everything, I have learned more about myself and what I believe in.

"I have been called arrogant, stubborn, over-confident . . . " he continued. "I enjoy conflict, and I hate to lose. Sometimes people don't understand me or my intentions. I am myself as much as I can be. Much is said in silence. More is learned in defeat than victory."

Watson said she has felt his presence since Saturday - even in that hospital room where all the screaming happened.

She'd had a hard time conceiving a child. It took years after the birth of her son to have another.

"I have this weird feeling and I can't explain it, but I feel like he's wants to make sure the baby's content," she said. "I wouldn't call the timing a coincidence. That's too insignificant a word."

Though she got upset with the officers - both for recruiting him in the first place and for telling her of his death - she respects the Army and is proud of her brother.

Tucker said she'd tried to talk him out of joining, but she's proud, too, of his accomplishments.

"I think he'd want his life remembered as a statement of peace," Tucker said.

"He was a strong person who always put others before himself," said a friend, Noreen Saima, 23. "He was kind-hearted and funny, a little sarcastic sometimes to the point where he came across as arrogant. But he was a good guy. He always told it like it was, and even if his friends were different, or didn't agree with him, he accepted it."

Guzman joined the Army in July 2003 and was deployed to Afghanistan in February 2007. Members of his company said he was a dedicated and selfless soldier whose awards included the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart.

"On a mission this past year while conducting a mountain clearance operation, Sgt. Guzman willingly gave the platoon RTO (radio telephone operator) his last bit of water knowing that we still had more than 4 kilometers to move," 1st Sgt. Derek Gondek said in a statement. "That is just the type of man that he was. His utmost concern was always his paratroopers."

Guzman wrote on his MySpace profile, "I have forgotten what it is to have a normal life. I walk the path laid before me for now. Soon I will choose where that path leads. I have had some hard lessons in my life. After everything, I have learned more about myself and what I believe in."

He noted that he has been called arrogant, stubborn and overconfident. "I enjoy conflict, and I hate to lose," he wrote. "Sometimes people don't understand me or my intentions. I am myself as much as I can be."

Guzman was based out of Fort Bragg, NC, and was killed in Gholam Haydar Kala, Afghanistan.

Army Sgt. Gabriel Guzman was killed in action on 3/8/08.