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Elkin soldier dies in Afghanistan
Capt. Mark Garner
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Published: July 7, 2009
Updated: 07/07/2009 01:07 pm
An Elkin soldier has died in fighting in Afghanistan.
Mark Garner died Monday, said Mark Byrd, the principal of Elkin High School. Garner was a 1997 graduate of the school, Byrd said.
Garner was among seven U.S. troops killed in what was one of the deadliest days for U.S. troops in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, officials said Tuesday.
The Department of Defense has not identified any of the victims of Monday's incidents. Byrd did not know any of the details of Garner's death.
Perry Lloyd, one of Garner's football coaches at the school, said Garner was outstanding both on the field and in the classroom, and earned an appointment to West Point after high school.
Garner graduated in 2002 from West Point as a second lieutenant, a West Point spokeswoman said. Garner was then assigned to an infantry unit at Fort Bragg, N.C.
"He always wanted to be a soldier," Lloyd said. "He was very committed. I don't think America could have a better soldier."
Lloyd said Garner was married and did not have children.
Lloyd said news of Garner's death moved quickly through Elkin Monday.
"We're a tight-knit community," he said. "I bet I had five people call me asking if I had heard."
Garner's mother, Beth, is a biology teacher at the school, Byrd said. Byrd said he has spoken to her and that the family is taking the news hard.
"She's very close to her son, and it's a very close family," he said.
Byrd said Garner also played basketball and baseball at the school and won a good citizenship award from the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1997.
Four of the soldiers' deaths Monday came in an attack on a team of U.S. military trainers in the relatively peaceful north, Navy Chief Petty Officer Brian Naranjo, a U.S. military spokesman. The deaths brought into focus the question of whether the U.S. is committing enough troops to secure a country larger than Iraq in both population and land mass.
President Barack Obama has ordered 21,000 additional American troops to this country, mainly in the south where Taliban militants have made a violent comeback after a U.S.-led coalition topped them from power in late 2001. The U.S. expects 68,000 troops here by year's end, double last year's total but still half as many as now in Iraq.
Two Americans were killed in a roadside blast in southern Afghanistan, Naranjo said. And another American soldier died of wounds in a Monday firefight with militants in the east, a U.S. military spokesman said. There were no further details on those incidents in the south and the east.
It was the deadliest day for American troops in Afghanistan since July 13, 2008, when 10 soldiers were killed - nine of them when militants using small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades attacked a remote outpost in the village of Wanat near the Pakistani border.
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