by Claro Esoen

Solomon wanted a burial in his country of birth.

BAUANG, La Union - Three years ago, at 21, Solomon Bangayan left La Union and his father to join his mother in the United States. Three years later, still a Filipino citizen, he died in Iraq.

The American dream came too late for the young man. For the ultimate sacrifice of dying in combat, he was granted American citizenship. In the small town of Jay, Vermont, he left his mother Helen, a Filipina, stepfather Victor Therrien, and sisters Elma and Hilda. A few weeks before his death in 2004, Solomon instructed his family that if ever he dies in a combat, he should be buried in the land of his birth.

Helen remembered, and brought his body home. Long before immigrating to the United States, Solomon wanted to fight Saddam Hussein. This was  years before he wanted to be a US soldier. As with the American dream, it was a wish to be granted as he was accepted by the US Army’s elite 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

When he died, Solomon was already a seasoned combat veteran. Before the United States attacked Iraq in early 2003, his commando unit made incursions deep into Iraqi soil, ahead of the main invasion forces. After two weeks incommunicado, Solomon contacted Helen to say he was alive. After 10 months, he returned to the US for a few weeks of rest and recreation. He was back in the war zone in January 2004 - after telling his mother that after Iraq he would follow that great Filipino dream - to become a nurse. He called home almost every night, telling his family of the increasingly dangerous sorties his commando unit made.

The end of the line came when a bomb exploded near his vehicle while his unit inspected roads used by US convoys in Iraq. In the US, not long after, a car pulled up to the family yard in Vermont. “I knew, I knew,” Helen recalled. “I knew why they had come. I screamed at them to go away. I would not let them in.”

Today, Solomon is a hero of sorts in his high school named after him. He was not forgotten in the US. Last May, Solomon was honored in a ceremony in Washington, D.C. for those who died in Afghanistan, Kuwait and Iraq. (InterNews&Features)