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Solider lived out his dreams Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2003/08/14/us_soldier_lived_out_his_dreamshttp://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2003/08/14/us_soldier_lived_out_his_dreams
US soldier lived out his dreams
By David Abel, Globe Staff, 8/14/2003
Somehow, when something momentous was happening in the world, Richard S. Eaton Jr. always seemed to be there.
The 37-year-old Army staff sergeant and counterintelligence analyst from Guilford, Conn., wasn't merely observing history -- he often helped create it.
When the United States invaded Panama in 1989, he served in the advance team and left as paratroopers landed. When the Army needed someone who could speak Spanish and make things happen on the ground, he helped train the Contras in Honduras. When Ferdinand Marcos needed a quick exit from the Philippines, he was there to help spirit the disgraced president to exile in the United States.
Eaton's last mission ended earlier this week, when fellow soldiers found him in his bed in Iraq, apparently dead of pulmonary edema, or fluid in the lungs. His family members have little information about his death, and they wonder whether he died from a strain of pneumonia that killed other soldiers. Pentagon officials said the cause of death is under investigation.
Though his work was secret, and his parents believe his job was to help hunt down Saddam Hussein, a mission that took him from another risky assignment in Korea.
"He was a student of history, and he lived on the cusp of history, just the way he always wanted," said Richard Eaton, his father. "He was our only child, a good son, a good soldier, and he was a huge part of our lives."
Eaton joined the Army in 1985, right out of high school. His parents took him on a 13-state tour to visit colleges, but he wanted to join the military, specifically an intelligence unit.
He followed his dreams, winning more than a few medals, learning to speak Spanish, French, German, and Korean, and seeing much of the world, his father said.
After training, Eaton moved to Korea, where he spent eight years. He sometimes called his parents from a bunker in a mountain just south of the border with North Korea, telling them he was watching soldiers as he spoke to them.
But much of his work was a mystery to them. "We knew he was a special agent, but we never really knew where he was on a given day," his father said. "He was very serious about his work. He took his oath as inviolable and he never disclosed the details to us."
Once, though, he opened up about his work in Honduras, where he injured his back after helping unload ammunition. He told his mother, "I've seen people die," his father said.
"It broke his heart," his father added. "He felt it so passionately, the loss of life."
Eaton had an apartment in Arlington, Va., and for a time he had an office in the Pentagon, where he worked for a private contractor when a terrorist-hijacked plane hit the building on Sept. 11, 2001. He wasn't there that day.
Growing up in Guilford, Eaton played on the varsity soccer team, was part of a deejay group that played music for school dances. An avid reader, he read mostly history, especially books about the military. Under his bed, his father said, he kept a manual that listed all the Army's jobs. He knew exactly the job he wanted.
He was a highly trained soldier who preferred to be in the field. Earlier in his career, he had been offered a spot at the US Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., but he turned it down.
"He abhorred paper," his father said. "He felt the work in the military was done by the troops. He never wanted to be anything more than a sergeant."
Over the past few months, his parents said, Eaton was assigned to a unit that worked in the Sunni triangle in Iraq, Hussein's stronghold and the center of resistance to the US occupation. He called his parents twice after arriving in Iraq, but occasionally he sent e-mails.
On July 28, from Ar Ramadi, about 60 miles northwest of Baghdad, he sent his parents an e-mail. It was the last time they heard from him.
"Lots of sand fleas and mosquitoes," he wrote. "I've been bitten from head to toe. Haven't slept much in the past few nights because of it. It's pretty hot, but not too bad."
He served with the Fort Meade, Md.-based 323d Military Intelligence Battalion, which was attached to the Army's Third Armored Cavalry. After fellow soldiers found his body, military officials said they wanted to compare his edema with the death of another soldier last week.
His father said many soldiers are coming down with a strange pneumonia-like illness. "Something is attacking the lungs," his father said. Eaton worries it may be a biological agent. "We don't know what it is."
Eaton's body is being held in Iraq for an autopsy. His family won't make plans for a funeral until the military returns his body.
David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
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