 LAGHMAN
PROVINCE, Afghanistan (6/22/2011) – Friends gathered
June 10 to remember U.S. Army Sgt. Devin A. Snyder, a
military police officer from Cohockton, N.Y. who was one of
four military police officers from the 164th Military Police
Company, 793rd Military Police Battalion, 3rd Maneuver
Enhancement Brigade, killed when an improvised explosive
device detonated June 4 outside the village of Khanda in
Laghman province, Afghanistan.
Also killed were U.S.
Army Sgt. Joshua D. Powell,
of Tyler, Texas, U.S. Army
Sgt. Christopher R. Bell, of Saint Joseph, Mich., and
U.S. Army Spc. Robert L.
Voakes, Jr., of Hancock, Mich, and civilian Brett Benton
of Dry Ridge, Ky.
Her friends laughed when they
thought of her clumsiness.
“She was extremely
clumsy,” U.S. Army Sgt. Jonathan Enlow, a team leader from
Tahlequah, Okla., remembered with a soft chuckle. “Every
time she turned around it seemed she had a new bruise. I
used to joke that she could trip over a single sheet of
paper!”
“You heard something fall and you knew she
was near,” U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Vincent Vetterkind, a squad
leader from Wausau, Wis., said with a smile. “You'd laugh at
her, and she'd start laughing too.”
The MPs said she
was as good-natured about her clumsiness as everything else
in her life.
“She would walk into barriers, or trip
over little rocks or just her own feet and then kind of
smile and look behind her and act like there was something
there she tripped over,” Enlow said. “She was always the
first to smile.”
“She was someone who was always able
to bring a smile out from everybody else, too,” Vetterkind
added. “She had the ability to make people laugh or make
them feel better if they were having a bad day.”
In
reality, the 5-foot-10, tall, thin, Snyder, who some in her
platoon nicknamed “Olive Oil,” was an excellent athlete. She
was a star soccer player and a high school track champion.
Her friends also described her as superstitious (she
would never use a white lighter because she thought it was
bad luck) and a bit paranoid, especially after she once
found a bug in some Afghan food she was eating.
The
other MPs recalled how Snyder fought to go on the deployment
with them. She had a physical profile dealing with a
circulation condition, but was able to convince the doctors
that the condition would be no more of a problem overseas
than it was in Alaska and eventually got it lifted.
“She would not give up on coming on this deployment,”
Vetterkind said. “She would fight tooth and nail.”
“She always cared more about what was right rather than what
was more convenient,” Enlow added. “She wanted to be a good
soldier, and she was.”
The soldiers remembered how
she had a tough time adjusting to the weather in Alaska,
where the 164th is headquartered.
“She wasn't an
Alaska person,” Enlow said. “She hated the cold and the snow
and said she wanted to move to Georgia.”
Still, Enlow
and the other soldiers said she always found a way to have
fun and do things with her fellow soldiers, such as buying a
pink four-wheeler to ride with them.
“She loved
tattoos,” U.S. Army Spc. Jeremy Johnson, a military
policeman from Chickasha, Okla., recalled. “She had a
half-sleeve of tattoos on one arm and talked about making it
a full-sleeve on one arm and then getting one on the other
arm, too. I kept giving her a hard time, telling her that
someplace in all those tattoos, she should hide ‘Waldo.'”
She was born in Virginia Beach, Va., Aug. 7, 1990, and
joined the Army as an MP in 2008 immediately after finishing
high school. She served as a team leader, driver, gunner and
patrolman with the 164th, which deployed to Afghanistan in
March.
Her awards include the Purple Heart, Bronze
Star Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Afghanistan
Campaign Medal, Global War on Terrorism Medal, Army Service
Ribbon, Overseas Ribbon, North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Medal, and the Combat Action Badge.
She is survived
by her mother and father.
It was clear that Snyder
was loved by her fellow soldiers.
Thinking of her
friend, U.S. Army Pfc. Stacey Jordan, a military police
officer from Belmont, N.Y., stared down at the table before
her with eyes filled with sadness.
“She was my best
friend,” Jordan said. “We were always together; she was like
my sister. She will be missed.” |
