How many more?

Sparta soldier killed in Iraq

When he was about 10 years old, Alex Gaunky stared up apprehensively at the climbing wall in the field house of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.

He climbed up several feet, but fear brought him back down. He tried again, climbing a little higher, came back down and tried several more times, reaching a greater height each time, his father, David Gaunky, recalled Friday.

"He kept trying until he finally made it to the top, and pretty soon was trying the harder sections of wall," David Gaunky said in a telephone interview.

"He never let fear keep him from doing something that he wanted to do."

That persistent attitude drove Alex Gaunky to enlist in the Army fresh out of high school after the Navy turned him down because of a food allergy about a year and a half ago, said his father, who learned Friday morning of his son's death in Iraq.

The 19-year-old private first class from Sparta was a combat engineer with the Army's 101st Airborne Division. He was injured when the Humvee he was riding in was struck by a vehicle that came across a road and crashed into his convoy, his father said.

The soldier, who had been in Iraq for about 2 1/2 months, died Friday morning while being airlifted to Germany, his father said.

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