A Schweinfurt, Germany-based soldier wounded in Iraq on May 14 has died in a stateside hospital.
Staff Sgt. Staff Sgt. Juan F. Campos, 27, of McAllen, Texas, died June 1 at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, the Pentagon announced. He was buried Friday in Texas.
Campos’ wounds were sustained when he and other members of 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment came under an attack from rocket-propelled grenades and roadside bombs.
Campos left Germany last August with the rest of the 1st Infantry Division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team, which is due to redeploy in October.
Local Texas CBS affiliate KGBT reported in May that Campos had suffered burns to 70 percent to 80 percent of his body after the attack.
“I guess it hit a fuel line and that’s the reason it caught fire so quickly,” Campos’ wife, Jamie, told KGBT. “Like the whole thing caught on fire, flew up in the air, and exploded. When it fell down, the only reason any of them survived is because the doors flew open and they all jumped out.”
Campos’ wife also said that he was on his second tour in Iraq and had just returned from leave May 3. Campos also had an 8-year-old son, Andre.
“He was the perfect man. He loved his family and his wife,” Campos’ sister, Noemi Campos, told the San Antonio Express-News.
A member of a veterans organization that had been helping Campos’ family told the Express-News that Jaime Campos had told her husband she was pregnant two days before he died. Although he was unable to talk, Campos was able to communicate with his family, which includes five siblings, through head and arm gestures.
“In every family there’s one who stands out the most as far as material for a husband, someone that you can pick out and say, ‘This is what you can be if you make good choices and pursue something that’s going to benefit your family’ — that’s who he was,” Campos’ brother, Jose, told the Express-News.
Members of the Schweinfurt public affairs office were unavailable to say whether a memorial for Campos has been scheduled.
Upcoming services at the Ledward Barracks chapel for other members of Dagger Brigade killed in action recently are for:
