After six months in Iraq, Army Spec. Christopher K. Hill was looking forward to two weeks’ leave to go home to Charlotte, N.C., to see his wife, Cheryl, and 14-month-old daughter, Cierra.
“They were making all these plans for the reunion because he hadn’t seen his daughter since she was 6 months old,” said Chris Cote, Hill’s mother-in-law.
He was to have left Iraq on March 19 and arrived home on March 21. He never made it.
On March 11, he was riding as first gunner on a Humvee when it was hit by the blast from an improvised roadside bomb in Fallujah, Iraq, the military told the family.
Hill, 26, and Staff Sgt. Joe L. Dunigan Jr., 37, of Belton, Texas, both of the 1st Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, were killed in the blast. Hill was awarded a posthumous Bronze Star for valor .
After graduating from Moorpark High School in California, Hill studied firefighting at junior colleges for nearly two years before enlisting in the Army in 1998. He served four years and went into the Army Reserves. He re-enlisted in May 2003 and went to Iraq in early September.
“When Iraq came to be, he said that’s what he was trained for, so he went back in at that time,” his mother-in-law said. “He was there because he believed in what he was doing. He was extremely patriotic. As much as he loved his wife and daughter, he felt that’s where he needed to be, that that’s what he was trained for.”
His mother, Adrienne Hill, said her son, a longtime Boy Scout who “thrived off of serving others,” was suited to the military. “The civilian life wasn’t his thing,” she said.
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The birth of his daughter also made him think he ought to do something about the world problems that arose during his first tour of duty, part of which he spent cleaning up the Pentagon after the Sept. 11 attacks.
“He was a real happy person,” his mother-in-law said. “He always had a laugh or a joke going on. He loved to sing karaoke.”
Nevertheless, he recognized the daily peril he faced and asked his mother to bury him in North Carolina, where his daughter could visit his grave, if he were killed in Iraq, she said.
Accomplished musician: Dunigan told his family before he left for Iraq that if he died there, he wanted to be buried where he grew up: in Marshall County, Ky.
Family members said Dunigan was an accomplished musician who played the trombone. With Marshall County High School’s marching band Dunigan performed in the Tournament of Roses parade, said his cousin, Jeremy Rose.
Dunigan went into the Army after high school. “He just had his mind made up after high school that this was what he was going to do,” Rose said. “He was just so proud of it.”
After being stationed in Germany for three years, he was transferred to Ft. Hood, Texas, where he met his wife of 15 years, Misty. He is survived by two sons, ages 10 and 15.