Our Latest American Hero #105

carlettasdavis
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Army Staff Sgt. Carletta S. Davis, 34, of Anchorage, Alaska; assigned to the 10th Brigade Support Battalion, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry), Fort Drum, N.Y.; died Nov. 5 in Tal Al-Dahab, Iraq, of wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near her Humvee during combat operations.

"Alaskan Among Fort Drum Soldiers Killed In Iraq"

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Staff Sgt. Carletta Davis’s mother said her daughter seemed to sense something might go wrong this time when she was deployed again to Iraq.

Before she deployed, “She visited people she didn’t normally visit, I think because she knew something,” said Lavada Napier.

Davis, 34, who grew up in Anchorage, was one of two Alaskans killed Nov. 5 when a roadside bomb exploded near their Humvee in Tal Al-Dahab, Iraq.

Davis, who graduated as Carletta Ward from East High School in 1991, joined the Army in 1994. She hoped to become a physician’s assistant when her military career ended, her mother said in a telephone interview from her home in Fairbanks.

As a flight medic, Davis spent much of her adult life in harm’s way. Besides the deployments to Iraq, she served six months in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1996-97 and a year in South Korea in 2002.

“It was hard, but she said ‘Hey, I’ve gotta do it,’ ” said Davis’ mother. “She didn’t never worry. She just didn’t like the fact she was going for a third time.”

Napier and her daughter spent six weeks together after Davis returned from her second Iraq tour in 2004-05.

“I said, ‘Tell me how that was.’ She says, ‘Mama, the children over there are like grown people. They’re doing things that adults would be doing. When one of them gets injured, they don’t even show pain on their face. They just hold the limb that has been severed.’

“She says it’s like the Twilight Zone. It’s like looking at a movie. Your emotions are so paralyzed once you see so much death. You just try to rescue who you can in the equipment you are in. She said that was the most hurtful thing — so many people needing help.”