Keith E. Fiscus dies of injuries from I.E.D.

Townsend-area man killed when a roadside bomb blew up last week became the 14th soldier from Delaware to die in Iraq.

The bomb detonated near a vehicle carrying Army Sgt. Keith E. Fiscus, 26, in Baghdad on Saturday, the Pentagon announced Wednesday.

His death was announced the same day Americans heard for the first time suggestions from the Iraq Study Group on how to better manage the conflict, which began with a U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

In Delaware and Hawaii, where his unit is based, and on personal Internet pages, friends and relatives were mourning Fiscus on Wednesday and planning to honor him.

Fiscus had phoned home the day before he died and "was doing fine," said Dena Archer, his older sister.

"It was an extreme shock. Nobody wanted it to come," she said. "My parents just talked to him the day before, so it still just doesn't seem real."

Fiscus played with GI Joe action figures as a boy, Archer said, though she didn't recall that it was her brother's dream to join the Army.

After graduating Glasgow High School in 1998, Fiscus, the second oldest of four children, worked in the produce department of a supermarket and later as a customer service representative for Discover Card, said Archer, 28.

Fiscus then enlisted in the Army, following his grandfathers' example of serving in the armed forces, she said. He finished boot camp in 2002 and served his first tour in Iraq.

Fiscus was killed in the middle of his second tour, which began in August. He had been assigned to the 25th Infantry Division based at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii.

Fiscus and a fellow soldier were apparently going to clear a roadside bomb -- or improvised explosive device -- when their Hummer triggered another bomb, said Alicia Dove of Honolulu. Dove said she knew Fiscus through her husband, Fiscus' Army buddy.

Archer said her brother was to have come home in February.

As family members in Delaware arranged services for Fiscus, his friends planned a memorial service Tuesday in Hawaii, said Dove, who created a tribute for Fiscus on the social-networking Web site MySpace.com.

"He really liked being in Iraq because he didn't have to deal with the day-to-day" issues of life in the United States, Dove, 21, said.

And, she added, he enjoyed having the close camaraderie found in combat. "He liked being around people who always had his back," she said.

She and her husband, Devin Dove, described Fiscus as loyal, trustworthy, intelligent, witty, and a good soldier.

And despite his rough exterior -- tattoos that he joked would scare children and an affinity for hard rock music -- Fiscus was also the "most caring, most sensitive, most hopeless romantic," Alicia Dove said.

While his friends reminisced about Fiscus, they also take comfort in knowing the man who seemed to always try to better himself died honorably.

"If I had to die," Devin Dove quoted his friend as saying, "I would like for it to be in war."

From the News Journal