Maryland Soldier Followed Independent Path

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Army Corp. Matthew Wallace was buried last week at Arlington's National Cemetery. A roadside bomb struck his Bradley fighting vehicle in Baghdad last month and killed him along with another soldier. NPR's Jack Zahora traveled to the place where Matthew Wallace grew up - Lexington Park, Maryland - and filed this remembrance.

JACK ZAHORA reporting:

American flags lined the Wallace family home. Messages are written on cars parked on the side of the road read my little brave heart, my best friend died fighting in Iraq, and I love you, Matt. Dad.

The town of Lexington Park is where the Navy tests its aircraft and avionics upgrades, and where Wallace's father - Keith Wallace - is a flight test engineer. He says a defining characteristic of his 22-year-old son was how he liked to stray away from the norm.

Mr. KEITH WALLACE (Flight Test Engineer; Father of Matthew Wallace): We live in a Navy town, and Matt chose to join the Army. It was a kind of independence by contrariness in that sense.

ZAHORA: Matthew Wallace also dropped out of high school, but later got his GED.

Mr. WALLACE: He didn't like following traditional molds and that kind of thing. He tried to find out where the boundaries were in the relationships he had, in the schools was in, and his clothing styles.

ZAHORA: His best friend, Matt Conraid(ph), agrees that Wallace never did things the usual way - like when he decided to give his car a new paint job.

Mr. MATT CONRAID (Friend of Matthew Wallace): We were out in the parking lot, and there's a white bucket of paint there that had spilled. So he and I were like, well, this car's a clunker. So we just took our hands and dipped it in the paint and covered this car from head to toe. And so the car was known as the white hand of Salleman(ph), and it'd drive around with this beastly roar because the muffler's pretty much detached.

ZAHORA: A few weeks ago on a summer afternoon in Baghdad, a roadside bomb went off by a tank in the Army's 10th Cavalry Regiment. Matthew Wallace was the top gunner on that vehicle and was engulfed in flames. While describing the scenario, Wallace's father pulls open a zip-lock bag containing a wallet and a few other objects his son was carrying during the attack.

Mr. KEITH: Smell that. Bradley fuel. We think he was soaked with fuel.

ZAHORA: Medics took Wallace to a field hospital north of Baghdad, and then a medical center in Germany. His family traveled to the area. Doctors told them Wallace was brain dead, and breathing with the help of a ventilator. Wallace's mother - Mary Wallace - tells of the difficult choice the family had to make.

Ms. MARY WALLACE (Matthew's Mother): We chose to let him go because he didn't deserve to stay like that anymore. We could sense his presence, and we felt that while his brain couldn't function, his spirit could hear us. And we all told him how much we loved him and appreciated his sacrifice and what a joy he had been to us.

ZAHORA: Wallace says her son was artistic. He painted, wrote music lyrics, and kept a journal. She read a letter that her son wrote from Iraq last February.

Ms. WALLACE: (Reading) I have seen some things that I could not forget in two lifetimes. When the mortars fall and you are sitting there hoping they don't hit you, that is all you can think of. But you have raised a strong son, mother. I have done what I have been training to do over and over, and I know that I am doing the right thing. Despite my times growing up, you have done well raising me. I wanted you to know that, and I want to make you proud that I am your son.

ZAHORA: At Wallace's funeral, the Army awarded him the Cavalry Spurs and Stetson, the rank of Corporal, and the Purple Heart. Mary Wallace says an unknown soldier also walked up and handed her his own bronze star for bravery in battle. He would only say that Wallace deserved it more than he did. For NPR News, I'm Jack Zahora in Washington.

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