Another Filam dies in war in Iraq

MANILA – A helicopter gunship pilot has become third Filipino-American serving in the US military to be killed in Iraq over the last two months.
Chief Warrant Officer 2 Ruel Garcia, 34, died in a crash after his Apache chopper was shot down by a surface-to-air missile in the morning of Jan 16 (Iraq time), his father Rosendo of Panghulo, Obando, Bulacan, told the Inquirer Friday (Jan 20). His unidentified co-pilot was also killed.
Two Fil-Am US troopers were killed in separate rebel attacks in Iraq last month, namely Spc. Peter Navarro, 20, and Sgt. Myla Maravillosa, 24. The latter was buried last Thursday (Jan 19) in her hometown of Inabanga, Bohol, with full US military honors.
Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo  expressed his condolences over the death of another Filipino-American soldier killed in Iraq.  “May beautiful memories of your son give you strength at this difficult time. And it may help to know how many people share your sorrow and stand with you in your time of need,” Romulo said in a statement addressed to his parents in Bulacan.
Romulo said he has instructed the Philippine Consulate in Honolulu to extend whatever assistance the family might need bringing home Garcia’s remains to the Philippines.
Garcia’s death is the third of the Fil-Ams stationed in Iraq after Specialist Peter Navarro, 20, and Sgt. Myla Maravillosa, 24, who had buried in her hometown in Bohol. Ferdinand Fabella
“I had my worries on the day he enlisted, but I had since conditioned myself to expect that anything could happen to him,” the elder Garcia said in Filipino of the eldest of his three children.
“He already loved planes and flying when he was still a small boy, back when I often took him to watch air shows at the Nichols Air Base (now Villamor Air Base in Pasay City),” he recalled.
He said he and wife Cynthia were informed of their son’s death by the US Embassy. He said they plan to bury him in Obando, although his body was to be flown first to his Filipino wife, Amapola, in Texas.
The young Ruel grew up in Bulacan and took up electronics and communications engineering at the Mapua Institute of Technology in Manila. In his fifth year in college, he moved to Hawaii to join his mother, a US immigrant.
He finished his engineering course at the University of Nevada and signed up for the US Air Force in November 1992, then switched to the Army four years later, his father said.
The chopper was downed in Taji, north of Baghdad killing Ruel and his co-pilot. He served under Task Force Iron Horse of the US Army’s 4th Infantry Division based in Fort Hood, Texas.
In Honolulu, his distraught grandfather Nicolas R. Garcia, 80, who lives in Waipi’o. said: “When my daughter in California called me I was really crying because he was my  first grandson from my oldest daughter. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I can’t control my breath.”