Maryland's Twenty-Fourth Hero

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Marine Pfc. Robert A. Guy, 26, of Willards, Md.; assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C.; died April 21 as a result of a non-hostile incident near Karmah, Iraq.

'HE WANTED TO BE THERE'

“He wanted to be there,” Ann Guy said of her son’s deployment to Iraq. “He wanted to be there, and he was so proud to be a Marine.”

Over the weekend, Guy’s family and friends remembered Guy as a goodhearted man who loved jokes and who worked for more than a year to become a Marine. “I never saw him work at anything so hard his whole life,” Ann Guy said. “He really wanted this.”

Deborah Cox, Guy’s aunt, said she remembered her nephew’s sense of humor, a side of Guy that Perdue spoke about as well. “He was very outgoing,” Perdue said. “He was in trouble quite a lot, but it was just mischief trouble. It wasn’t any kind of big trouble.”

Friends and family said Guy was a dedicated Marine. Ann Guy remembered a conversation she had with her son about joining the Marines.

“He said ‘Mom, are you going to be OK with this?”’ Ann Guy said. “And I said, ‘Bobby, I’m going to tell you right now, there isn’t a mother alive that wants to see her son going off to war.”’

But Ann Guy said she supported him entirely when he decided to join: “He died doing what he wanted to do.”