How many more?

The Wisconsin State Journal's Brenda Ingersoll reports:

Soldier was known as a caring man with ready laugh

Fallen soldier Matthew R. Kading, mortally wounded in an Iraq explosion, was "a man of peace" with a ready laugh who loved bowling and baseball, those close to him said Wednesday.

Sgt. 1st Class Kading, 32, a Wisconsin Army Reserve member from Madison, was injured near Tikrit Oct. 19 when an explosive detonated near his vehicle. He died Monday at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, the military said.

Karla Kading, Matthew Kading's mother, said her son was in the army for 14 years, including seven years active duty. During that time, he was able to squeeze in 1 years at Madison Area Technical College, where he was studying to be an electrician. Since the start of the Iraq war, her son served first at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he worked as an electrician, and then in Iraq, mainly at Fort Speicher, she said.

In Iraq, Kading was a platoon sergeant, supervising soldiers whose missions included construction such as carpentry, plumbing and electrical work, Army Reserve spokesman Bill Geddes said.

"His missions were to build up, not to tear down," his mother said. "I had raised him as a pacifist."

"A lot of his efforts were humanitarian," said Rick Roeth, a friend of Kading for 20 years. "He had a great sense of humor. He was a very caring man."

Karla Kading said although she raised her son as a pacifist, "my husband was also in the Army, and between the two of them, he went in (joined up)." Asked what she remembers most about him, she said, "his ready laugh."

She was able to talk with him only infrequently, she said. "We e-mailed often. He was a man of peace and very few words . . . He wasn't free to talk about much, but his longing to be home and with us" came through in his e-mails, she said.

Kading was deployed to Iraq Oct. 27, 2004. Deployments to Iraq often are for one year, but it was not known when Kading was due to return home, said Geddes. Kading was assigned to the Army Reserve's 983rd Engineer Battalion, based in Monclova, Ohio.