Oklahoma Soldier Dies In Iraq

Tuesday, December 26th 2006, 5:03 pm

By: News On 6

QUINTON, Okla. (AP) A 22-year-old Army soldier from Oklahoma has died in Baghdad after being wounded when his patrol came under small arms fire, the Defense Department said Tuesday.

Spc. Joshua D. Sheppard of Quinton died on December 22, authorities said. He was assigned to the 642nd Engineer Support Company, 7th Engineer Battalion, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry), Fort Drum, N.Y.

Sheppard began his tour in Iraq on September 15. He had been issued a four-day pass for the Christmas holiday, but was told he was needed as senior operator on a mission, said Julie Young, Sheppard's mother, who talked to her son a day before he was killed.

"He had promised me he would come back," Young said. "He wasn't sure he could keep that promise."

Sheppard, described by his mother as a "peacemaker," was killed during a gun battle in Baghdad when members of his patrol encountered an enemy using small arms fire.

Young had expected to talk to him Christmas, but instead got news he had died.

"He's a good boy," Young said. "Everybody loved him. I'm just amazed by the outpouring of love we've received from the community."

Sheppard, a 2003 graduate of Quinton High School, enlisted in the Army when he was 19. He was hoping to learn skills that would allow him to come back to his community and work as a contractor with heavy equipment, Young said.

But his real love was hunting and fishing. He could eat his weight in fish and wild game," Young said. "He liked squirrel and dumplings, fried rabbit, deer jerky. He's redneck to the bone. He loved being outside."

"He was a die-hard Okie," Young said. "He always said he was coming back to Oklahoma and he was never going to leave again. I guess he doesn't have to now."

While in elementary school, Sheppard told his mother he wanted to be a preacher of the "gospel of love, that's what he called it," Young said.

For career day that year, he dressed up in a white dress shirt, black pants and red tie and tucked a Bible under his arm.

"For a bashful little boy, that was a big step," Young said.

"He was polite as the day is long. He was every parent's dream of a good kid."

Sheppard's older brother is also in the Army and a younger brother is in the Marines, Young said. Joshua Sheppard will be awarded a purple heart and a bronze star posthumously.