Posted on 10/14/2009 6:33:37 AM PDT by milestogo
The local funeral service for Stephan Mace, the Loudoun Army specialist killed Saturday in Afghanistan, will be held at 1 p.m. Monday at the Purcellville Baptist Church, Hall Funeral Home announced today.
Mace's body was flown back to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware Tuesday, where his parents were among a group of grieving parents awaiting the return of the caskets. The soldier's body will be transported to Leesburg Executive Airport some time Sunday and then transported the funeral home with a motorcade escort provided by the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office.
It is the circumstances of his son's death that his father finds intolerable, after reading reports that military leaders were surprised by the size of Saturday's insurgent attack. On his recent visit home, Mace told his family his base was attacked virtually every day.
"Stephan sat on the sofa with me when he was home, telling me there were 300 Taliban fighters in the village next to him, hanging out in the mosques and mingling with civilians. I read in the news that [the military] said they didn't know about the Taliban. It's funny that I knew about it a month ago," Larry Mace said.
He recalled sitting at Dover with four of the families whose sons "got massacred, just like my boy."
"They put my boy in harm's way," he said.
Mace was home on leave last month and shared concerns weeks before about the dangerous position of the outpost. He said there was no electricity or water at the base because attacks from the same artillery forces that overran the post Saturday "got their generator." When his father asked him why they couldn't just "take it out," his son said the soldiers couldn't call an air strike unless they could see the muzzles flash.
"They knew the location of it, but they couldn't do anything," his father said.
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