<p>Just before his Georgia National Guard unit deployed to Iraq, Sgt. John Frank Thomas took time to accompany his family to the Florida National Cemetery to bury the ashes of his father, an Air Force veteran.</p><p>"We had a memorial service with a 21-gun salute," said Thomas' grandfather, John Thomas. "John said he would like to be buried there with his father. So we're going to try to carry out his wishes." The cemetery is in Bushnell, Fla.</p><p>Thomas, 33, of Valdosta was among four citizen-soldiers of the 48th Infantry Brigade killed Sunday by a roadside bomb in Iraq. They were the 4,300-soldier brigade's first combat casualties since World War II.</p><p>The National Guard on Wednesday identified the other soldiers as Staff Sgt. Carl Ray Fuller, 44, of Covington; Sgt. James Ondra Kinlow, 35, of Thomson; and Spc. Jaques Earl Brunson, 30, of Americus.</p><p>"These soldiers died doing what they believed in," Maj. Gen. David B. Poythress, adjutant general of the Georgia National Guard, said in a statement. "They died in pursuit of freedom for Iraqi citizens, and to protect Americans from terrorism."</p><p>The four soldiers belonged to the brigade's B Company, 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment. The National Guard said they died after an explosive struck their Humvee during a patrol near Baghdad.</p><p>Kinlow grew up in Lincoln County, where he married his high-school sweetheart and joined the Guard a year after graduating in 1988. He and his wife, Daphanie, had two children _ Chauncey, 15, and Chelsea, 10.</p><p>Kinlow loved basketball and had a sporting one-on-one rivalry with his son, his wife said. Though he'd been too small to play in high school, Kinlow saw every Lincoln County Red Devils game he could for the past 17 years.</p><p>Kinlow had just taken a job as a freight truck driver when he was mobilized to go to Iraq, his first overseas deployment in 16 years with the Guard.</p><p>"His mother, she was distraught," Daphanie Kinlow said Wednesday. "He said, `Mama, it's for the good of the country and maybe one day Chauncey's children and Chelsea's children won't have to fight terrorism.'</p><p>"That's what keeps us going around here," she said. "He was doing what he thought was right."</p><p>Thomas had joined the 48th Brigade about 18 months ago and was doing construction work in Valdosta before his unit was activated, his grandfather said.</p><p>Thomas had served four years on active duty in the Marine Corps until 1998, his grandfather said. He was considering a career in forestry after he returned home, as he loved treks in the woods searching for Indian arrowheads with his pit-bull mix, Annie.</p><p>A devout Christian who packed his Bible for the trip to Iraq, Thomas didn't let family and friends dissuade him from deploying.</p><p>"He said people would tell him how dangerous it was, and he would say that's what he was in the service for," said John Thomas, who raised his grandson in Valdosta.</p><p>Brunson, a former prison guard, had joined the Guard two years ago, saying he wanted to make the world safer for his two young children. His mother, Cathy Brunson, said her son's children were a reason he should have stayed home.</p><p>"I am personally opposed to the war," Cathy Brunson said Tuesday. "I feel our troops should be brought home and let the Iraqis fight among themselves."</p><p>Family members of Fuller could not immediately be reached for comment.</p><p>The 48th Brigade is the largest combat unit of the Georgia National Guard to deploy since World War II. Since the brigade arrived in Iraq in May, 61 of its soldiers have been wounded or injured. One died in an accident last month.</p><p>The brigade has 2,700 members from across Georgia, and is augmented by about 1,600 others from Alabama, Illinois, Missouri, Maryland, Rhode Island and Puerto Rico.</p>
