Eric feared that his brother had been killed in action on March 25 when members of Brian's sniper team ran up to him and asked, "Did you hear about Brian?" In fact, Brian had scored the battalion's first combat kills -- shooting three insurgents who had attempted to plant roadside bombs, Eric said.
"He sent all three of those guys to hell, where they belonged," Eric said.
Now home consoling his sister-in-law and his parents, Eric said he was ordered not to return to Iraq because the unit was scheduled to return home next month. It is an order that has left him conflicted.
"I wish I was still with them, fighting the good fight," he said. "I know my brother feels the same way."
Before leaving Iraq, Eric made his buddies promise that they would track and kill the insurgents who took his brother from him. Last week, he said, the mother of a squad member called him to relay a message from Iraq: " 'We got [them].' "
"That meant the world to me, hearing that," Eric said.
Someone asked him this week if his brother's death was worth the sacrifice. "And I answered: \o7He \f7thought it was worth the sacrifice," Eric said.
To honor his brother, Eric said, he will have himself tattooed with a message Brian had always intended to tattoo on his own body: "Never Left. Never Forgotten."
And when he wakes up every morning, Eric said, "I thank my brother for getting me home."
As he finished his eulogy, his face slick with sweat above his stiff Marine collar, Eric mentioned that he wanted to provide his brother in death with something he had never received in life: a standing ovation.
Everyone inside the church, in the central pews and in the cramped balcony above, rose and applauded for two full minutes. When it was over and the church echoed with soft sobs, Eric looked up and said, "\o7Semper fi \f7to an always faithful Marine."
As the mourners filed outside into brilliant August sunshine, Lt. Col. Kevin Rush, the battalion's rear commander in Ohio, stood beside a hearse. "That's the finest eulogy I've ever heard in my life," he said.
The colonel spotted the father, Paul Montgomery, and went over to shake his hand. "Brian will always be a hero," he told him.
An hour later, the funeral procession snaked into a cemetery. Among the six uniformed pallbearers of the Marine Color Guard was Eric Montgomery, a tall, slender figure with a narrow face and strong jaw beneath a white dress cap. The Montgomery family was presented with a Purple Heart and a ritually folded American flag.
At the gravesite of Lance Cpl. Brian Montgomery, the last hand to lower his casket into the rich earth of Ohio was that of the brother he had brought safely home.
Researcher John Beckham in Chicago contributed to this report.
