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 Marine Lance Cpl. Aaron W. Simons, 20,
Killed in Rocket-Propelled Grenade Attack in Iraq
Marine Lance Cpl. Aaron W. Simons was taking a break while patrolling the desert city of Qaim in western Iraq, near the Syrian border, when he was killed last month.
His team had reached what the military calls a "hardened site" -- a structure surrounded by sandbags and concertina wire, said his cousin John Widick. The Marines longed to shed their flak jackets, drink water and find refuge from the pale yellow desert, dry heat and coarse sand, he said.
For Simons, 20, the stop also meant a chance to lay down his heavy machine gun. Although he had been a skinny teenager in his hometown of Modesto, he had bulked up so much since joining the Marine Corps that he had been named SAW gunner -- typically a burly Marine whose job it is to carry the squad's heaviest hand-held weapon, the 15-pound Squad Automatic Weapon machine gun.
Simons had just taken off his armor and Kevlar gloves. Then came the attack.
A rocket-propelled grenade hit his compound. Simons' wounds were severe and he bled to death April 24 before reaching a medical facility, Widick said.
The Department of Defense issued a news release two days later stating that Simons was killed "while conducting combat operations against enemy forces in Al Anbar province."
Simons was assigned to the Marine Corps' so-called suicide Charlie unit -- the 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in Twentynine Palms, Calif. He was on his second tour in Iraq.
A dark-haired man with thick eyebrows, Simons was "a dichotomy," said his sister Rachel. He combined a nonconformist, artistic sensibility with a love for military life, she said.
Simons had readily traded the ponytail and goatee he wore in high school for a Marine haircut and the sort of tattoos that troops give each other while passing time in war zones. But he remained the poet of his family -- a sensitive young man who played guitar, loved to draw and designed his own avant-garde T-shirts -- "a wearable work of art," his sister said of one.
He was the youngest of four children born to an electrical engineer and a homemaker in what was, when he was a child, still a farming community. The family still lives in the same house where Simons was born.
"When he was growing up, he was very shy, very quiet, very artistic," his cousin said.
Simons' father bought him a guitar in a secondhand store. He trailed along with a friend taking music lessons and listened in. Simons became an accomplished player, strumming guitar for worshippers in his church and forming his own garage band, Widick said.
Simons played blues, rock 'n' roll, rockabilly, gospel and classical, his cousin said. An antique violin had been passed down in the family, and Simons taught himself to play that too.
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