TUSCOLA, MI, USA U.S. Army SGT, BAT B, 1ST BN, 76TH FA, 3D INF DIV, FORT STEWART, GA BAGHDAD, IRAQ 05/24/2005
A soldier from Michigan who enlisted in the Army to give his life meaning and direction was killed this week by an explosion in Iraq, his mother said.
Sergeant Charles A. Drier, 28, who was serving as a sniper, was scheduled to return to Michigan on leave in July to give his mother away at her wedding, but was killed Tuesday, The Saginaw News reported.
Mary Drier, of Tuscola County’s Columbia Township, learned of her son’s death while she was at work at the Tuscola County Advertiser, where she is a reporter. She said her son enlisted in March 2001.
“He felt like his life was going nowhere,” she said. “There’s nothing but dead-end jobs around here. He wanted his life to have a purpose, to have some meaning.”
People who knew her son in high school described him as generous and a natural leader. Drier was a 1995 graduate of Unionville-Sebewaing Area High School, located about 26 miles east of Bay City.
“He liked structure, discipline, tradition. He probably liked the Army because it was the same discipline he found in football,” said his former coach, Tim Travis, now the principal at Unionville-Sebewaing Area Middle School.
Drier is the 52nd member of the U.S armed forces with known Michigan ties to be killed in Iraq.
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