Sandy Britt remembered

Sarah Arnold knew something was wrong with her son, Army Staff Sgt. Sandy Britt, when he joined his family in Myrtle Beach, S.C., in June while on leave from Iraq.

Britt was on edge, Arnold said, and was worried about returning to war. Things were getting much worse, he told her.

On Tuesday, the 30-year-old Lake Mary graduate died after his unit was hit with an improvised explosive device near Baghdad. It was his first tour in Iraq.

"My son will be a hero to me forever," Arnold said.

On Thursday, the wife of a soldier who was injured in the same explosion called Britt's widow, Valorie, and relayed the following message from her husband:

"Tell my wife and son, Taylor, and mom I love them."

Then, Arnold said, her son died.

Britt, her only child, graduated from Lake Mary High School in 1994. He played soccer for the school and enjoyed martial arts and surfing.

"The beach was something that would relax him," Arnold said from her Apopka home Thursday night. "That's why we met in Myrtle Beach."

His aunt, Jane Owen of Orlando, said she never expected Britt to become a casualty of the war.

"I never thought that Sandy wouldn't have made it back because of how he was," she said. "Sandy didn't show fear."

Before joining the Army, Britt served with a Navy underwater-demolition unit, his mother said.

"He had been on special missions while he was in the Navy," she said. "There was a lot I wasn't allowed to know, but I know he was in Afghanistan and other places on secret missions."

At the time of his death, Britt was a paratrooper with the 1st Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division based in Fort Bragg, N.C.

After serving four years in the Navy, Britt moved back to Central Florida where he met Valorie. Their son, Taylor, is 5.

In 2002, Britt became a member of the Army Special Forces.

Arnold last spoke to her son Sunday while her daughter-in-law and grandson were at her Apopka home for a visit.

"I got a call from his captain at Fort Bragg about how much he will be missed," Arnold said. "He said he was an exemplary soldier who always tried to do more."

Britt was the 152nd Floridian killed in the Iraq war.

From the Orlando Sentinel

Related Link:
Sandy R. Britt dies 'of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his unit during combat operations'