ASSOCIATED PRESS Spc. William McMillan III is pictured with wife Elizabeth at Schofield Barracks on Dec. 7, the day he left for Iraq.

Attacks kill isle soldier and 20 Iraqis

The 22-year-old is the ninth person from his unit killed in Iraq

A Schofield Barracks soldier was killed when a bomb hit a U.S. convoy in Samarra, north of Baghdad, on Tuesday.

He was identified by his family as Spc. William McMillan III, 22, of Lexington, Ky. He deployed to Iraq on Dec. 7. His mother, a nurse, said her son seemed almost genetically inclined for his job. His father studied at the Kentucky Military Institute and at West Point before serving in Vietnam.

He was recently awarded the Bronze Star, his mother said.

"We told him, 'One Bronze Star is enough, start ducking,'" said his mother Marge McMillan.

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A 22-year-old Schofield Barracks medic from Kentucky was killed Tuesday when a homemade bomb hit a U.S. convoy in Samarra, north of Baghdad.

The Associated Press and Lexington Herald-Leader identified the soldier as Spc. William "Bill" McMillan III.

He was the 85th soldier with ties from Hawaii to die in Iraq since 2003.

The Associated Press reported that five other soldiers were wounded during the bombing incident, but the wire service did not identify the Army unit and there has been no official identification of McMillan by the Pentagon. Nearly 4,000 Schofield Barracks soldiers from the 25th Infantry Division's 2nd Stryker Combat Brigade have been in Iraq since December. Eight soldiers in the unit have been killed since the deployment started. McMillan would be the ninth.

The newspaper said the soldier's mother, Marge, said her son seemed almost genetically inclined for his position in the Army. "It's almost like this is what he was born to do, you know? It was definitely in his blood."

McMillan's father, William McMillan Jr., studied at the Kentucky Military Institute and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., before serving in Vietnam, and his mother is a nurse at St. Joseph's Hospital in Lexington.

McMillan's wife, Elizabeth, has been living in Kentucky since he left for Iraq in December.

He attended high school at Hargrave Military Academy in Virginia, where as a senior he was captain of the wrestling, lacrosse and football teams, winning the school's Athlete of the Year Award. He loved the water and in his free time enjoyed wakeboarding and boating on Lake Cumberland with his family, Marge McMillan said.

"He was always the star athlete," she told the newspaper.

He attended Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Va., for a year before deciding to go straight into the Army. He was stationed in Hawaii for a year before deploying to Iraq as a combat medic, his father reported.

After his first few months in Iraq, Marge McMillan asked her son if the U.S. military should be there.

He told her pulling out now would be wrong, she said.

"He was a good medic," she said.

"He got lots of compliments on the stuff that he did."

Indeed, a two-star general recently pinned the Bronze Star on him, Marge McMillan said.

His family did not have the details of what led to the medal during his first tour of Iraq. "I know he had saved some lives," his mother said.

"We had told him, 'One Bronze Star is enough, start ducking,'" she said. "He must have really gotten hit hard," Marge McMillan said. "He was a really strong kid."

McMillan was due home on leave in September. Elizabeth, a student at the University of Kentucky, said she talked to her husband just hours before he was killed. His mother talked to him the day before.

Marge McMillan said her son -- who is also survived by a sister, Lauren, and a brother, Brad -- always managed to get to the phones. His family talked to him two or three times a week.

Elizabeth McMillan said she had been looking forward to talking to her husband yesterday, the 18-month anniversary of their wedding.

Of their last conversation, she said, "He was happy and himself. They were switching him from night shift to day shift patrol, and he was on day patrol when this incident occurred. About 12 hours later he died. The last thing he told me was he loved me. I'll always have that."

McMillan's family said he will be buried at Camp Nelson in Kentucky. No date or details have been set.

The Associated Press reported the spate of bombings where one soldier and 20 Iraqi citizens were killed came after Iraqi officials stepped up pressure on Washington to agree to a specific timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops, in a sign of the government's growing confidence amid falling violence.

The Iraqi military said yesterday that the number of "terrorist attacks" in June declined 85 percent from the same period a year ago.

An average of 25 attacks took place each day last month, compared with 160 during June 2007, Iraqi army spokesman, Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Mousawi, said at a news conference.