Army Capt. Mark C. Paine, 32, Rancho Cucamonga; killed in roadside bombing

Now that her son is gone, a particular memory about him stands out in Kairyn Paine’s mind.

The two had sat down to eat lunch at a local joint near their home in Lafayette, Calif., east of Berkeley. She asked Mark what he wanted to do with his life. He thought for a moment and said he wanted to spend a few years in the Army, just like his father.

“I said to him, ‘Mark, do you know what that means? You could be killed,’ ” she recalled. “He looked up at me and said, ‘Mom, there are worse ways to die than fighting for your country.’ ” Mark was 7 that day.

Twenty-five years later, 32-year-old Army Capt. Mark C. Paine was killed Oct. 15 when a roadside bomb exploded near his Humvee in Taji, Iraq, north of Baghdad. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 66th Armor Regiment, 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division at Ft. Hood, Texas. Paine was among 10 California troops killed in October -- one of the bloodiest months for U.S. forces since the war began in 2003.

“He was a warrior,” said Paine’s father, Roger, who served in Vietnam as an Army officer. “He absolutely lived the life he wanted to live. He died doing exactly what he wanted to do.”

Paine’s parents and friends remembered a generous and caring man who was fiercely determined to take care of the roughly 150 men under his command.

While home on leave from his first deployment to Iraq, Paine flew around the country visiting the wives and children of soldiers in his company who had been killed. He also spent $18,000 of his own money buying Christmas presents and helping the families to pay bills, his mother said.

It was that dedication that led to Paine’s death.

When told that one of his units was engaged in intense fighting, Paine insisted that he leave the hospital bed where he had been recuperating from a concussion suffered two days earlier from another makeshift bomb. He assembled a relief convoy of four Humvees and set out for Taji. The bomb that killed him detonated as the convoy turned a corner with Paine’s vehicle at the front.

“Mark was raised that you do not set yourself apart or above,” his mother said. “You get in with your men and you go together.... His loyalty was to his men. He would have done anything for them.”

Paine earned the Bronze Star for valor twice during his first tour in Iraq but refused to tell his mother what he had done to earn them. In Iraq since last December on his second deployment, he was scheduled to return home in less than a month, she said.

Paine was an avid outdoorsman and accomplished Eagle Scout. After his parents moved to Rancho Cucamonga a few years ago, he enjoyed visiting and playing golf with his father.

Paine attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and then went on to earn a graduate degree in history from the University of Maryland. He had hoped to return to West Point someday to teach future soldiers.

joel.rubin@latimes.com