Guardsman Mostly Kept Danger to Himself

Gene Vance always seemed to be going off to do things most other people didn’t. Once he went away for several weeks and came back speaking Farsi. He spent many mornings in grueling training--for what, few knew--hiking a brisk 10 miles with 75 pounds of bricks on his back and returning with his feet busted up and his body broken down.

One of his closest friends assumed that he was just a great guy who loved a challenge. But the full picture of Sgt. Gene Arden Vance Jr. did not click into focus until Sunday, when the 38-year-old West Virginia man became the second National Guard soldier to die in combat in the war on terror.

“There were two Genes--the one you knew like a brother and the one who’d go off and do the stuff he never told you about,” said Ed Evans, his friend for a decade. “We didn’t know how highly trained he was. It was like a secret life.”

Vance was called up in December. He left behind his job at a bicycle shop in Morgantown and his bride of five months, Lisa, just as they were to leave for a delayed honeymoon in Northern California.

He was a language specialist, trained to detect and decipher foreign communications. He died in an ambush Sunday when suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban forces fired on his unit, part of a patrol that was sweeping eastern Afghanistan for enemy forces.

“He had trained for years to do this job and he loved it,” said Sheril Keeler, a family friend on hand to comfort his widow in the couple’s modest ranch-style home. An American flag flew outside and a yellow ribbon was tied to the handle of the front door. Uniformed National Guard officials and women bearing trays of food began arriving Monday morning.

Vance was born in the small town of Yaeger, W.Va. He graduated from Oceana High School outside of Charleston, then served seven years in the Army. He returned to civilian life, took some college courses, then joined the National Guard, studying Farsi at the Defense Language School. He has a teenage daughter from his first marriage.

To most, Vance was a tall, rangy outdoorsman who worked any hours required as a manager at the Whitetail Bicycle and Fitness shop and trained with the Guard one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer.

But Vance was not your normal “weekend warrior”; he was assigned to one of two Special Forces groups of the National Guard that were regularly called to active duty. His death underscores the proximity to danger for more than 26,000 Army and Air Force guardsmen plucked from their civilian careers to fight in the war on terrorism at home and abroad.

Many of these citizen-soldiers play a supporting role to forces on the front lines. They are the pilots who fly the cargo planes, the repairmen who fix them, the chefs who keep troops fed. But some, like Vance, are special operations soldiers, trained to back up elite units such as the Green Berets. Many, like Vance, were once active-duty soldiers who hadn’t lost the taste for adventure or the desire to serve their country.

“They’ve been involved in all phases of this operation, from flying combat missions to support to being on the ground as well. They have been playing a very critical role from the beginning,” said Lt. Col. Dave Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman.

The first guardsman killed was Sgt. 1st Class Daniel A. Romero, one of four U.S. servicemen who died destroying a weapons cache on April 15 near Kandahar.

Vance is the 22nd U.S. service member killed in action since the fighting began last year. Some in West Virginia who thought they knew him learned only recently that he had won a Bronze Star, although the circumstances were not immediately clear.

“That doesn’t surprise me on two counts--that he won it and that he never told anybody about it,” said Bruce Summers, owner of the bike shop where Vance worked.

Vance met Lisa, a software engineer, while they were putting together a Web site for the shop. They married in July. She was on a work assignment in Washington when casualty officers tracked her down to break the news.

On Monday, an Army honor guard received Vance’s flag-draped coffin at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. It was not immediately clear when his body would be flown home to the United States.

The news media converged outside his home and the bike shop with questions about who he was. His high school planned a moment of silence. And West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise ordered all state flags to be flown at half-staff until after the burial.

“Sgt. Vance’s selflessness and supreme sacrifice for his country in defense of our liberty on a battlefield half a world away brings honor to his family, the people of the state of West Virginia and his country,” Wise said.

Vance probably would not have cared for all the attention, his friends said.

“He would have hated it,” Summers said. “Gene was an extremely private person. He wasn’t shy. He just didn’t talk a whole lot about himself.”