Cpl Raleigh Clinton Smith
Born: December 7, 1983
Died: December 23, 2004 in Al Anbar, Iraq
Cpl. Raleigh C. Smith of Lincoln, Montana joined the Marine Corps in part to help pay for college later. He wanted to return to Troy one day to teach history. He was remembered as a zany child who made a small town laugh, and as a soldier troubled by what he had seen in the fighting that eventually took his life. Raleigh spoke of worrying about his brother to sixth-graders when his former teacher Terry Herman asked him to visit her class and tell the children about his experiences in the Iraq invasion. Smith had hoped to attend college with money from the military and return to Troy and teach history. He was an outdoorsman who even enjoyed panning for gold and was also a cross-country runner whose medals hang in the family’s living room. Most people in Troy knew Smith as the kid who would strap on roller blades, tie a cape across his back and take to the streets with a garbage-can lid for a shield and a wooden sword. He died as result of enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq at age 21.
Marines
3rd Battalion
5th Marine Regiment
1st Marine Division
I Marine Expeditionary Force
Camp Pendleton, California
Burial is at Milnor Lake Cemetery in Troy, Montana
The Cpl Raleigh Clinton Smith by Freedom Remembered, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
