Kurt R. Curtiss
Profile
Age: 27
From: Murray, Utah
Assigned to the 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, Fort Richardson, Alaska
Incident: Army Staff Sgt. Kurt R. Curtiss died Aug. 26 in Paktika province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when he was shot while his unit was supporting Afghan security forces during an enemy attack.
Died: August 26, 2009
‘He felt we were in danger’
The Associated Press
SOUTH OGDEN, Utah — A candlelight vigil has been scheduled for Aug. 31 for a Utah soldier killed in Afghanistan.
Army Staff Sgt. Kurt Curtiss, 27, of Murray was fatally shot Aug. 25 in a firefight as his unit tried to clear a group of insurgents out of a hospital in Paktika province, Army spokesman Nathan Banks said.
Curtiss is survived by his wife, Elizabeth, a 9-year-old son and a 6-year-old daughter.
Curtiss had two prior tours of duty in Iraq and told his mother that the situation he found in his most recent deployment in Afghanistan was “brutal.”
“He didn’t say much more than that,” his mother, Ruth Serrano of South Ogden, told the Salt Lake Tribune. “I don’t know if he wasn’t allowed to, or if he just didn’t want to worry people. I don’t know.”
Forty-seven U.S....