Sgt. Arthur Stacey Mastrapa

[Stan]

Family and friends mourn fallen soldier

BY ROGER ROY

The Orlando Sentinel

APOPKA, Fla. - (KRT) - After 16 months away from their families, and a harrowing year escorting convoys on the deadly highways of Iraq, the soldiers of the 351st Military Police Co. were only a day away from their flight home.

Even better, Sgt. Arthur Stacey Mastrapa of Apopka learned, he and his buddy Sgt. Elvin Irizarry would be on the same flight out of Iraq.

"That's great," Mastrapa told Irizarry, "now you get to hold my hand."

His friend wasn't kidding, Irizarry knew: Mastrapa was willing to brave snipers and roadside bombs, but he was afraid to fly. On their flight to Iraq last year, Irizarry had held Mastrapa's hand all the way.

But Mastrapa wouldn't need his friend's hand, after all.

On June 16, the day before he would have flown home, the 35-year-old Army reservist and father of two was killed in a rocket attack at an air base north of Baghdad.

A chance shot, fired from miles away, landed nearby as Mastrapa waited outside the post exchange at Camp Anaconda, a sprawling base near Balad, about 45 miles from Baghdad. Shrapnel from the three 127 mm rockets killed him and two other soldiers and wounded more than 20 others.

At a memorial service Friday at Forest Lake Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Apopka, where Mastrapa grew up, attended school and took his own children, hundreds of family, friends and fellow soldiers gathered. They were there to remember a man they said never stopped thinking about his family and friends, and to try to understand how his life ended so far from home.

Friends and family said they learned things about Mastrapa after his death they had not known before. His brother, Mark, did not know Mastrapa was afraid to fly. His colleagues in the Army, where he was known as Arthur or just Mastrapa, did not know his family always called him by his middle name, Stacey. He used only his first name in the Army, his sister Kristy said, because Stacey sounded like "a girl's name."

But some things didn't change whether he was in uniform or civilian clothes. In Iraq, Irizarry said, Mastrapa's family was always his first thought. He carried his family photo album even on missions. He was always showing off a video of the first haircut for his son Reece, who was just four months old when Mastrapa was called to active duty, or new photos of his daughter Marisa, 8, who bravely laid a red rose inside her father's open, flag-draped casket at Friday's service.

Mastrapa joined the Army after he graduated from Forest Lake Academy next door to the church. He spent five years as an active-duty soldier, serving as a military policeman stationed in Alabama and Germany.

When his enlistment ended, Mastrapa and his wife, Jennifer, moved back to Apopka where he got a job as a postal carrier, working at the Altamonte Springs Post Office.

In 2000, he joined the Army reserve, again as a military policeman, where he met Irizarry and Sgt. Frederick Mendiola. The three quickly became close friends. Once, on a three-week deployment to El Salvador for training - Irizarry held his buddy's hand on that flight, too - the three talked about the difficulties of a long-term overseas deployment. They decided they could survive it, as long as they had each other to lean on.

As war with Iraq seemed more certain, the three were worried they might be called to active duty, but separated. They decided to switch to another unit, the 351st, where they'd have a better chance of serving together.

When the 351st was shipped to Kuwait in May 2003, they were deployed together, but once in Iraq they ended up in separate platoons. Mastrapa was always scheming to get them together, Irizarry said.

"He said, `We could be The Three Kings, the movie,' " a reference to the film about the adventures of three U.S. soldiers in the 1991 war with Iraq, Irizarry said. "I said we would be more like The Three Amigos, the cartoon."

But anytime the unit's convoys were attacked, they quickly checked to make sure their friends were safe. And the three made a pact, Irizarry said.

"If one of us fell, the other two would be there for each other and for the families," he said.

Even at the end, when they were so close to getting home, Irizarry said, Mastrapa recongized they still might not make it.

"Somehow, he knew, and he was preparing us all for what was to come," he said.

When the plane finally lifted off from the runway in Iraq for the flight home, Irizarry said, the other soldiers were cheering. But he could not. And as he recounted the moment to those at Friday's service, it wasn't clear who had needed whose hand the most.

"Mastrapa's not afraid to fly anymore," Irizarry told them, "because he's got wings."

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© 2004, The Orlando Sentinel (Fla.).

[Joe_in_RP]

We have heard these stories before. The names and faces change but the story remains the same. To some of us this is Vietnam all over again. How many people must die due to bloodshed before Jesus comes?