Army 1st Lt. Joseph D. deMoors

Remember Our Heroes

Army 1st Lt. Joseph D. deMoors, 36, of Birmingham, Ala.

1st Lt deMoors was assigned to the 3rd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, Fort Carson, Colo.; killed Jan. 7, 2006 when a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter crashed near Tal Afar, Iraq. Also killed were: Maj. Stuart M. Anderson, Maj. Douglas A. La Bouff, Capt. Michael R. Martinez, 1st Lt. Jaime L. Campbell, Chief Warrant Officer 4 Chester W. Troxel, Spc. Michael I. Edwards and Spc. Jacob E. Melson.

Mourners recall three soldiers killed in Iraq as family men
Associated Press

FORT CARSON, Colo. — Three soldiers killed in Iraq who left behind 10 children among them were memorialized Wednesday at ceremony attended by hundreds.

“All three of these men were, above all else, deeply devoted to their families,” said Maj. Horatio Taveau.

Maj. Douglas A. La Bouff, Maj. Michael Martinez and 1st Lt. David de Moors died Jan. 7 when their helicopter crashed on a flight from Mosul to Tal Afar, Iraq.

The 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment officers from Fort Carson were praised at the ceremony as brave and courageous soldiers, but it was their commitment to their families that was given the most attention.

Every night before La Bouff went to bed he played a tape recording of his two children, Cassidy, 7, and Douglas, 3, saying: “Goodnight Daddy.”

“That was the sound I went to bed with as well,” Maj. Robert Short, La Bouff’s Iraq roommate, told the mourners.

First Lt. Kevin Evans, who befriended de Moors in Iraq, said unlike many soldiers who put the Army first in their lives, de Moors lived first for family, then faith and then Army.

“He would talk about coming home to watch his boys play basketball,” Evans said of de Moors’ children, Moroni, Demetrius and Chastity.

Martinez, a military lawyer who had three sons and two stepdaughters, was proud of his merged family. He never used the term stepdaughter, his wife of seven years, Kelly, said.

“It was like ‘The Brady Bunch,”’ she joked after the service.

Army 1st Lt. Joseph D. deMoors was killed in action on 1/7/06.