Grief for War Dead With California Ties

Flags were flying at half staff in Anaheim on Monday as the city opened its heart for one of its own: Sgt. Edward C. Smith, a part-time reserve Anaheim police officer and full-time Marine was reported killed in action outside Baghdad.

“He was a big guy and he looked intimidating,” Anaheim Police Officer Darrin Lee said of the 39-year-old Marine. “But he was very soft-spoken and seemed like a gentle guy. We’re grieving; it hurts like we’ve lost one of our own family members. Somebody needs to talk about him because he’s a hero.”

John Nicoletti, a city spokesman, agreed: “There’s a tremendous amount of pride, and at the same time a tremendous sense of grief.”

Smith was one of several men with California ties who were killed last week in the war with Iraq.

Pfc. Chad Bales, 20, of Coahoma, Texas, a Marine based at Camp Pendleton, was killed in a noncombat vehicle accident. Marine Cpl. Mark A. Evnin, 21, of South Burlington, Vt., who was based at Twentynine Palms, was shot Thursday during a firefight. Marine Cpl. Erik H. Silva, 22, of Chula Vista, a rifleman based at Camp Pendleton, was killed in combat Thursday. Army Pvt. Devon D. Jones, 19, of San Diego was killed Friday when his vehicle fell into a ravine. Army Chief Warrant Officer Eric A. Smith, a 42-year-old Rochester, N.Y., native who once lived in San Diego, was killed Wednesday when his Black Hawk helicopter crashed.

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Sgt. Edward C. Smith

For Smith, Iraq was to cap a 20-year military career. Hired by Anaheim in 1999 after graduating with top honors from Palomar Police Academy, the sergeant -- a member of the 2nd Tank Battalion, Fox Company, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force who led a company of more than 200 Marines -- was to join the Anaheim Police Department full-time on his return from Iraq.

A member of the department’s special tactics detail, he had e-mailed fellow officers recently to tell them he was carrying his SWAT cap all the way to the Iraqi capital. Smith, a veteran of Operations Desert Storm and Desert Shield who had been named Orange County’s 2001 Reserve Police Officer of the Year, was one of nine Anaheim police officers deployed to Iraq and the only one to die. He is survived by his wife, Sandy, and three children, ages 8, 10 and 12, who live near Camp Pendleton.

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Pfc. Chad Bales

Bales was a short, stocky kid who was sometimes picked on by bigger boys growing up. He decided early on that he would prove those kids wrong. First, he did that through football. Later, he turned his attention to the Marines -- a job his mother believed would give him maturity.

“He wanted to prove his ability,” Ginger Metcalf said. “He was determined to be a Marine.” Bales, assigned to a supply convoy, called his mother a week before the war started.

“All he told me was that he was working 27-hour shifts and that he was very tired,” she said. As word of Bales’ death spread Friday through his hometown, hundreds of people in the community descended on Metcalf’s home. He is survived by two half-sisters and two half-brothers.

“By early afternoon, half the high school was here,” Metcalf said. “If 932 is the population of Coahoma, we had 931 of them here. And that’s only because that one person was out of town.”

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Cpl. Mark Evnin

He was a tough guy, a high school kid who played football to keep in shape for the rigors of lacrosse. He was a powerful young man who wanted to test himself by joining the Marine Corps.

Basic training was tough, all right, but that suited Evnin fine. He went looking for more, so he signed up to become a sniper and a scout.

Evnin, an only child, was an average student growing up in South Burlington, Vt. When he finished high school, he didn’t think he was ready for college. So he joined the Marines in January 2000, and eventually was sent to Twentynine Palms.

His mother thought the Marines would give him direction, make him more mature. It did. He learned to balance a checkbook, read more and thought of his future. Mindy Evnin was shocked when her son wrote to say he and his buddies were reading books in the Harry Potter series. “I loved it,” she said. “All these rough, tough, macho guys who I’ve seen in photos drinking beer and acting stupid -- and here they were reading Harry Potter.”

When he first got to Kuwait, Evnin wrote to his mother that was glad to be there, eager to begin fighting for his country. In his last letter, which she received just days before the war started, he wrote that he had decided to go college and study international relations.

“He thought that with how confused the world was ... that he could make the world a safer and better place,” she said.

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Cpl. Erik Silva

Silva had taken her daughter to the bus station Friday when three men in military uniform arrived at her Chula Vista apartment to deliver the news about her son.

“It never even entered my mind that they were here because something happened to Erik,” said Vicki Smith, who lives next door to Gloria Silva. She called Silva on her cell phone.

“I didn’t know what to tell her. So I told her that my husband was going away on a trip, and that I needed her here,” Smith said.

For the next two hours, the three officials patiently waited inside a government-issue Ford Explorer in front of Silva’s apartment building. When she arrived and saw the vehicle’s government plates, Silva dashed out of her car, crying.

“She knew they were here because something had happened to Erik.”

Smith said her friend has been in seclusion since Friday in El Centro, where her family is comforting her while she awaits the return of her son’s body.

On Monday, a large U.S. flag was draped over the balcony of Gloria Silva’s apartment. Smith said Erik Silva is survived by two brothers in addition to his sister.

“He was the perfect child that every mother wanted,” Smith said. “He didn’t smoke or drink and he loved his mother.”

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Pvt. Devon D. Jones

Jones, 19, joined the military just three weeks after graduating from San Diego’s Lincoln High School. Principal Wendell Bass said Jones wanted to be a teacher, even participating in an internship at Kennedy Elementary School.

“He was just one of those good kids that helped make the world go around,” Bass said of Jones, who was active in his church and respected as a public speaker. Joining the military, Bass said, “was one of those last-minute decisions, but he was really excited about it.”

Based at Fort Stewart, Ga., he had previously lived with two younger brothers in a San Diego group home and, later, with a foster family. Recently, according to his foster sister, Kiesha Erving, 33, Jones had written home that he was adjusting well to military life but thought it strange being in the Kuwaiti desert. Said his foster mother, Evelyn Houston, 50: Devon was such a strong person that “when he walked in the door, you felt his presence. He was our hero before he ever joined the military.”

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Times staff writers Anna Gorman, Errin Haines and David Haldane contributed to this report.