Sergeant

Berkeley's police chief apologized Saturday for sending a sergeant to a reporter's house in the middle of the night to request changes to a story. Chief Michael Meehan sent the sergeant to Bay Area News Group reporter Doug Oakley's Berkeley home about 1 a.m. Friday to ask for changes to a story about a community meeting. The meeting had been called so that Meehan could address growing outrage over the department's response to an incident that ended with the beating death of a 67-year-old man. "It was just a big error on my part," Meehan said.

Army Sgt. Noah M. Korte, the father of two young sons, was planning a second honeymoon. He told his parents that he wanted to take his wife, Kristi, to Las Vegas. They were going to rent a sports car, stay in a fancy hotel, see shows and celebrate their marriage. His parents planned to baby-sit Sean, now 6 months old, and James, 3. Korte, 29, described the planned honeymoon during his last conversation with his parents just before Christmas. Seventeen days into his fourth overseas tour of duty, Korte was killed with two other soldiers by an improvised explosive device in southeast Afghanistan's Paktia province, south of Kabul.

Some described the big-shouldered Marine's soft way of talking, others the discipline he expected from his troops. All spoke of the religious faith he wore as openly as his uniform. "He wasn't the kind of guy that went to church on Sunday and on Monday was out raising hell," said Nils Bjorn, a civilian who worked with Sgt. Manuel L. Loggins Jr. at Camp Pendleton. "He was a religious guy who put his family first. " Of Loggins' death earlier this month, he added: "It does seem kind of senseless.

Christmas Day was painful for Leslie Frokjer. That morning, she stepped away from her family briefly and tearfully reread her husband's last, loving letter, sent from Afghanistan just days before he died. It didn't get easier when she emerged from her bedroom to be with her parents, grandparents and 2-month-old son. Looking into the baby's eyes, she was reminded again of her husband and that her boy will never know his father or spend a Christmas at his side. Marine Sgt. Chad Frokjer was killed June 30 when he stepped on an improvised explosive device in southern Afghanistan's Helmand province, on the Pakistani border.

In 2003, Daniel Quintana was a military police officer stationed at Morón Air Base in Spain. His job involved typical policing duties: foot patrol, traffic stops and domestic disputes. When he was off duty, he would play racquetball with fellow officers. He also loved to explore Spanish cities and towns. But that year, as the U.S. led the invasion of Iraq, Quintana decided he wanted to be a soldier. He wanted to fight on the front lines. "It shocked me," said Jean-Claude Brooks, a retired flight chief who served alongside Quintana in Spain.

The words were a farewell from a son and a soldier: I want to make myself perfectly clear about why I gave my life for this. On his fourth deployment to Afghanistan over three years, Tyler Holtz wrote his family a letter. The 22-year-old sergeant in the Army's elite Ranger regiment gave it to a fellow Ranger and asked him to send it home if anything happened to him. Don't make the mistake of thinking I joined the Army out of some misguided, short lived sense of patriotism.

An Army sergeant so sharp he looked like a recruiting poster — who had skulls tattooed on his leg said to represent the people he'd killed in Iraq — was convicted of three counts of premeditated murder Thursday in the most gruesome war crimes case to emerge from the war in Afghanistan. Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, 26, was also found guilty of keeping decomposing fingers, leg bones and a tooth as trophies from corpses, and organizing the gang beating of a fellow soldier he feared would report the rampant hashish use in what Army officials say was an "out of control" platoon.

Our Yankee feet are marching through Georgia. Thousands of us from the North are here to beat the Southern Rebels. But our supplies are running low. We have to live off the land and that means forage for food wherever we go. A while back we found plenty — chickens and hams and sweet potatoes at the farms and plantations. But there aren't any along here, just swampland, and I'm mighty hungry. When my ma heard I wanted to sign up she said, "Jeremy, you're only fifteen. " "President Lincoln needs him," Pa said.

San Bernardino County sheriff's investigators are investigating whether a Los Angeles police sergeant arrested on suspicion of committing a burglary last weekend in a foothills community is responsible for other break-ins nearby. Sgt. Lucien "Lou" Daigle, 44, was arrested Sunday after a homeowner reportedly confronted him inside her large Mentone home and doused him with a potent form of pepper spray typically used to ward off bears. Daigle, an 18-year LAPD veteran, fled but crashed his car a few miles away, apparently overcome by the repellent, said San Bernardino County Sheriff's Sgt. Paul Morrison.