Free Republic

The items on the table in the church lobby told only parts of Orthodox Marine Lance Cpl. Dimitrios Gavriel's life. Two Purple Hearts commendations — one for an injury he received in Iraq on Nov. 12, the other for the wounds that would prove fatal just a week later in Fallujah, a hot spot of insurgency in the war. He will be buried tomorrow at Arlington National Cemetery. But yesterday, an estimated 1,000 people, including former teammates, current wrestlers and fraternity brothers from Brown University, filled Holy Apostles Sts. Peter and Paul Greek Orthodox Church. They crowded into its choir...

"Locked, cocked and ready to rock," said Marine Lance Corporal Dimitri Gavriel, 29, before the start of the Fallujah offensive. "That's about how we feel." Most Brown University graduates don't speak this way. In fact, if Lance Corporal Gavriel had still been on the Brown campus, his comments might have been censored as hate speech. But then, there aren't many Brown University graduates in Fallujah, where the very concept of hate speech would give any Marine a chuckle. It was in Fallujah, on November 19th, that Dimitri Gavriel was killed by enemy fire. Gavriel had been building a successful career...

Nobles: Lance Cpl. Dimitrios Gavriel, for a sacrifice of a lifetime in defense of his country. In America's all-volunteer military, it is sometimes assumed that only men and women without much of a future decide to enlist. The arrogance of such an assumption might be tolerable if it weren't so blatantly wrong. A case in point is Lance Cpl. Dimitrios Gavriel, age 29, who enlisted in the Marines in October 2003, leaving behind a promising career on Wall Street as a financial analyst. Working 16-hour days at Bank of America, Mr. Gavriel lost two friends on September 11, reports the...

Nobles: Lance Cpl. Dimitrios Gavriel, for a sacrifice of a lifetime in defense of his country.     In America's all-volunteer military, it is sometimes assumed that only men and women without much of a future decide to enlist. The arrogance of such an assumption might be tolerable if it weren't so blatantly wrong. A case in point is Lance Cpl. Dimitrios Gavriel, age 29, who enlisted in the Marines in October 2003, leaving behind a promising career on Wall Street as a financial analyst. [snip]On Nov. 18, Lance Cpl. Gavriel was killed in Fallujah. He was posthumously awarded two Purple Hearts...

No one who knew Dimitrios Gavriel, 29, was surprised when he joined the Marines, even though it seemed an unlikely choice for an Ivy League–educated Manhattan research analyst. In 1998, just a few months after moving to New York City, Mr. Gavriel had written in his diary: "I feel like I’m swimming in a sea with sharks working on Wall Street." Mr. Gavriel meant that in a good way...

HAVERHILL -- Called by a sense of duty following the World Trade Center attacks, Dimitrios Gavriel left behind his career as a Wall Street analyst, joined the Marines, and shipped out to Iraq. There he went to the front lines as a lance corporal a decade older than most of his comrades Last week, Gavriel, 29, was killed in fierce fighting in Fallujah.