Today, a hearse will take
Michael Elledge's casket from Sacramento International Airport to the Chapel of the Pines in Placerville, where an afternoon service will be held.
Elledge, was killed by a makeshift bomb that tore through his armored Humvee on a stretch of road north of Baghdad.
He died in the passenger seat of his Humvee while returning to his outpost near one of the dust-colored suburbs north of Baghdad. An
EFP, an explosively formed projectile.
"My first question is, 'Why?' I want his life to mean something," said his wife, Carleen, a native of Sacramento who also has roots in Placerville. "I know God took him for a reason. I don't know what that is yet."
He will rest in a slice of what he surely thought of as God's country, in the woods and knolls of a Placerville cemetery he visited years ago with his wife.
"I'm a military wife. We live day by day. I didn't even know it was the week of the war's fifth anniversary. We live moment to moment and pray everyday that our husbands will come home safely," she said.
Elledge, 41, and the father of three, was in his second tour. He believed the worst was over, his wife said.
"He really did think they were making a difference this time, with the Iraqi people. The first time he went, he didn't see it so much. … He did feel he was doing something good over there."
