Little boys and “playing cowboys” seem to go hand in hand. Bobby Roberts was no exception. While growing up in Winter Park, Florida, there was nothing the little boy with blue eyes and blond hair liked more than to dress up and pretend that he was a cowboy. It seemed only fitting that as a man he’d become a soldier in the U.S. Army’s 1st Cavalry Division.  But what didn’t seem fitting was that the young husband, and father of a three-year-old son, would die on the streets of Baghdad.

            Corporal Roberts and a fellow soldier attached to A Troop, First Squadron, of the U.S. Army’s Cavalry Division, were killed on November 22, 2003 in a death broadcast around the world as an example of the brutality that servicemen fighting in Iraq face each day. News accounts say that following an accident the two soldiers were pulled from their humvee and their bodies beaten by bystanders.

            Although Bobby grew up in Florida, his paternal family hails from Orleans County, Vermont. His parents are Daniel Roberts and Joanne Norman. Bobby’s grandmother, Doreen (Lafoe) Roberts, who played an active role in her grandson’s life, grew up in Brownington, Vermont. She is the daughter of the late Harold and Pearl Lafoe of Brownington, and the widow of Wayne Roberts, who was the son of the late Ben and Annabel Roberts of Newport. Bobby’s uncle, Mrs. Roberts’s son, Doug, who also played a very active role in Bobby’s life, graduated from Derby Academy in the late ’60s. Bobby still has cousins who live in Orleans County.

     “I’m very proud of him, he was proud of what he was doing,” Mrs. Doreen Roberts said in an interview with this writer several years ago. “All he wanted was his son to live in a free country.”

  Since Bobby’s death, his grandmother and uncle said they have spent a lot of time reflecting on Bobby’s life. They recalled how he had a strong connection with his Vermont roots, although Bobby had never lived in Vermont. Doug laughed when remembering the first time that Bobby visited Vermont. He told how after his first night in Vermont, Bobby woke up to a fresh blanket of snow—the first snow that he’d ever seen. So excited to see snow, he dashed out the door into the snow wearing only a pair of shorts and a T-shirt.

            “He stopped in his tracks,” Mr. Roberts laughed. “He couldn’t understand why the snow was cold.”

Bobby’s grandmother and uncle told how Bobby came about joining the Army. They said that he and his wife, Jill, being young parents, were dedicated to providing their little boy, Jacob, with a good life. Bobby decided the best way to support his family and to get an education was to join the military. He enlisted in the Army in July 2002 when he was 19 years old.

            “I thought it was a good idea, but I wanted to have him join the Air Force,” Mr. Roberts said. He wanted him to join that branch of the service not because he thought the Air Force was any safer or better, but because he thought that it would provide Bobby with a better education. One thing that neither he nor Bobby’s grandmother ever thought would happen is that Bobby would end up in a war.

            When the war began, Bobby’s brother, Chris, who was a Marine on the frontlines, was ambushed two days into the war. Coming under heavy artillery fire, Chris and his fellow Marines battled for their lives. Gunships eventually came to their rescue. By the time the attack was done, two dozen Iraqi soldiers lay dead. Bobby didn’t arrive in Iraq until the official end of the war. But like other servicemen who spent time in Iraq, or are currently there, Bobby quickly learned that the “end of the war” did not bring the end of violence and death.

            Bobby looked forward to the packages from home, his grandmother and uncle said. They sent him all kinds of treats and supplies from home. They said he particularly looked forward to his uncle’s famous homemade venison jerky.

            “I prayed to God that he’d survive,” Mrs. Roberts said. Thinking back, she has no problem remembering her last words to her grandson. “My last words were, “I love you.”

            “He believed in what he was doing, but he was scared to death,” his uncle said, remembering the last conversation that he had with his nephew, a boy he thought of as a son. A particularly scary and dangerous part of his job was going door to door looking for enemy soldiers. “In one of Bobby’s phone calls he told of a patrol he was on where he forced a door open which was blocked by an Iraqi woman lying on the floor with a bullet hole in her head. As he went room to room, he found over a dozen that had been executed by fellow Iraqis,” Mr. Roberts said. He added that he thought that the death, danger, and destruction had begun to take a toll on his nephew. One thing the young soldier looked forward to was coming home for Christmas and seeing his son, wife, and the rest of his family.

            A final letter from Bobby to his son says, “Take care of Mommy until Daddy gets home.” But on November 22 something went terribly wrong.

            The details of what went happened that day are a bit sketchy, and Bobby’s grandmother and uncle find some of the details that were reported on the news about his death too painful to talk about. All they really know is that Bobby and another soldier were rushing to Baghdad International Airport in a humvee, responding to enemy fire, when their humvee hit a tank, or at least a track that had broke free of a tank.

            When Mrs. Roberts heard a knock at the door to her house, and looked out and saw a soldier standing there, she said she had a gut feeling the end had come.

            “I immediately knew,” she said. “I said, ‘it’s Bobby, isn’t it?’” The soldier confirmed her worst fear. Bobby was dead.

            To bring some good from Bobby’s death, his family raised funds in his name to benefit needy youngsters who wished to play baseball at Candy Land Park in Longwood, Florida. Bobby loved to play baseball at the park, his grandmother and uncle explained. Unfortunately, though, they said they noticed something while watching him play—not all children could afford to play with or buy the necessary equipment. The money that was raised through this fund-raiser was used to ensure that all young people who wish to play baseball at Bobby’s former home field have a chance to do just that.

            “This was just something we wanted to do for Bobby,” Mr. Roberts said.