Guardsman

Philadelphia police bomb squad members searched the Tacony home of a National Guard member yesterday morning and found a cache of mock explosives and live ammunition that authorities said had been taken from a Frankford armory. The guardsman, Edward Cox, 32, of the 6600 block of Edmund Street, was arrested on charges of risking a catastrophe and possessing explosives. The cache included explosives used in military training exercises to simulate blasts from such things as booby traps and artillery shells, police said.

A National Guardsman from Kensington yesterday admitted storing stolen military explosives in his house and car. Michael J. Graber, 38, of Lee Street near Tioga, a salesman, pleaded guilty in federal court to unlawful storage of 2 1/4 pounds of C-4 explosive and 11 quarter-pound sticks of TNT. In a statement to police and agents of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Graber admitted taking the explosives from Fort Dix, the...

A teen-age national guardsman bludgeoned, strangled and torched an Army private whose body was found burning in a Fort Dix, N.J., trash bin last weekend, authorities said yesterday. Pvt. Jose A. Aponte, 17, a member of the New Jersey National Guard assigned to Fort Dix last month for what a base spokesman called "advanced individualized training" as a truck driver, was charged with murder under military law on Tuesday night. Aponte, of Egg Harbor City, N.J., is a member of the National Guard's 144th Supply Company in Hammonton.

NEWARK, N.J. - An Army national guardsman from Newark has been killed in Afghanistan. Staff Sgt. Jorge Miguel Oliveira, 33, was killed Wednesday when insurgents attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device, the National Guard said. Oliveira was assigned to the Security Forces Platoon of the Second Battalion, 113th Infantry Regiment. The unit, based in Riverdale, deployed to Afghanistan in June and was assigned to a provincial reconstruction team. Oliveira joined the National Guard in 2003.

Patrick Cubbage - the military honor guardsman fired for saying "God bless you" at a veterans' cemetery - has been offered his job back but is seeking compensation and an apology for his dismissal. "I was disappointed. They basically said I could come back if I sat in the corner and kept quiet," Cubbage, a former Vietnam combat veteran and retired Philadelphia police officer, said yesterday. The New Jersey Department of Military and Veterans' Affairs, which was flooded last week with thousands of e-mails and hundreds of phone calls protesting his dismissal, told Cubbage by letter that he could return as a guardsman provided he submitted to a "negotiated settlement.

As a military honor guardsman, Patrick Cubbage had a simple message to the families of deceased veterans at graveside services. "God bless you and this family, and God bless the United States of America," he would say as he presented a folded flag to them. Because of that, Cubbage was fired in October from his job at the Brig. Gen. William C. Doyle Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Burlington County, near McGuire Air Force Base. He breached cemetery protocol, his supervisor said, by deviating from the script.

TO SUPPORT warrantless wiretaps by the Vietnam-era guardsman who never reported for duty is to spit in the faces of those who fought and died at Lexington and Concord, Belleau Wood, Normandy, Iwo Jima. George Bush is a traitor to the principles of our democracy, and anyone who agrees with this evil, lying, miserable excuse for a commander in chief as he attempts to undo in a mere six years what has been our bedrock for more than 200 simply does not deserve to live in a free society.

Two New Jersey National Guardsmen remained in critical condition and a third soldier's condition improved yesterday at St. Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, one day after a lighting bolt struck their campsite in Fort Dix before dawn. One guardsman was killed and three others suffered minor injuries when an electrical current passed through their tents while they were sleeping. All of the men were members of an 80-person National Guard unit based out of Lawrence, N.J., that was completing a weekend of artillery training.

Seven National Guardsmen were injured yesterday morning when a blasting cap exploded in a dummy Claymore land mine during a routine training exercise at a West Philadelphia armory. The blast rocked a cavernous room in the armory at 33d and Market Streets, where about 200 Guard members were assembled for weekend duty, and sprayed the men closest to the mine with fragments of plastic and metal. One guardsman, Jeffrey Savage, was struck in the face. Six others who were standing nearby suffered injuries that authorities described as minor.

Barbara Taylor Ramsey, 88, of West Philadelphia, a beloved schoolteacher who seemed to have found the fountain of youth in her joy for life, died of Alzheimer's disease Saturday at Bryn Mawr Terrace. She was the daughter of a doctor, and as a young woman loved to drive her father's big Cadillac to house calls for patients such as Marion Anderson, said her sister-in-law, Ruth Ramsey. Born and raised in South Philadelphia, the former Barbara Taylor graduated from Philadelphia High School for Girls in 1937.

NEWARK, N.J. - An Army national guardsman from Newark has been killed in Afghanistan. Staff Sgt. Jorge Miguel Oliveira, 33, was killed Wednesday when insurgents attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device, the National Guard said. Oliveira was assigned to the Security Forces Platoon of the Second Battalion, 113th Infantry Regiment. The unit, based in Riverdale, deployed to Afghanistan in June and was assigned to a provincial reconstruction team. Oliveira joined the National Guard in 2003.

BERKELEY TOWNSHIP, N.J. - A body recovered from Barnegat Bay is that of a Coast Guardsman who fell off a speedboat last weekend, authorities have confirmed. The death of Petty Officer Nicholas Holmes, 25, has been ruled an accident, state police said. An autopsy found he died from asphyxia. Holmes and another man were tossed from the 23-foot boat after being rocked by a wave left by another vessel Saturday night. No speed limit is posted in the area. Holmes was a machinery technician at Air Station Atlantic City.

A National Guard recruiter who stole recruitment-incentive money was sentenced to three years of probation and 50 hours of community service at a hearing yesterday in Burlington County Superior Court. Gregory Fletcher, 33, of Lower Township, Cape May County, also was ordered by Judge Jeanne T. Covert to make restitution of $8,500. Fletcher admitted on Oct. 26 that he had defrauded the Guard Recruiting Assistance Program (GRAP), which provides cash to part-time soldiers who get others to join the National Guard.

Great road movies take their characters from Point A to Point B down circuitous routes, with daunting obstacles, oddball surprises and personal revelations a key part of the journey. Neil Burger's The Lucky Ones falls short of greatness, but this disarming and deftly balanced film - about three returning Iraq war veterans sharing a minivan from New York to Las Vegas - is still very much worth catching. Thrown together by chance - and the generosity of a Dollar Rent A Car clerk at JFK - T.K. (Michael Peña)

Barbara Taylor Ramsey, 88, of West Philadelphia, a beloved schoolteacher who seemed to have found the fountain of youth in her joy for life, died of Alzheimer's disease Saturday at Bryn Mawr Terrace. She was the daughter of a doctor, and as a young woman loved to drive her father's big Cadillac to house calls for patients such as Marion Anderson, said her sister-in-law, Ruth Ramsey. Born and raised in South Philadelphia, the former Barbara Taylor graduated from Philadelphia High School for Girls in 1937.

An autopsy done over the weekend on the body of Pennsylvania Army National Guard soldier Kirsten Fike showed her temperature to be "significantly elevated" when she collapsed while on duty, a medical official said yesterday. But further analysis is needed before doctors can say definitively what caused her death a day after being deployed on border-patrol duty in Arizona, the official said. Fike, 36, collapsed in 104-degree heat Wednesday while mending camouflage netting two hours into her first work detail along the Mexican border near Yuma.

Spec. Frederick A. Carlson 4th, 25, a Pennsylvania Army National Guardsman whose unit is based in Sellersville, Bucks County, died of a heart attack after being found unconscious in his barracks Saturday afternoon in Taqqadum, Iraq, military authorities and his father said yesterday. Among other survivors is an infant son who "is coming up on a year old," said the soldier's father, Frederick A. Carlson 3d, 47, of Macungie. He said military officials told him that his son died of a heart attack, after having been in combat the night before.

TO SUPPORT warrantless wiretaps by the Vietnam-era guardsman who never reported for duty is to spit in the faces of those who fought and died at Lexington and Concord, Belleau Wood, Normandy, Iwo Jima. George Bush is a traitor to the principles of our democracy, and anyone who agrees with this evil, lying, miserable excuse for a commander in chief as he attempts to undo in a mere six years what has been our bedrock for more than 200 simply does not deserve to live in a free society.

Spec. Kurt Krout used to shy away from the spotlight, but friends said he would have been honored by the respect and affection that accompanied his burial with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia yesterday. Krout, a member of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard, was killed in Iraq Aug. 6 when his vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb in Samarra, about 60 miles north of Baghdad. Sgt. Brahim Jeffcoat, 25, of Philadelphia, also was killed in the blast, and three other Guard members were injured.

Funeral services are set for 9 p.m. Tuesday for Spec. Kurt Krout, 43, the Army National Guardsman from Milford Township, Bucks County, who was killed in Iraq on Aug. 6. Friends and relatives may visit from 7 to 9 p.m. Tuesday and 7:30 to 7:45 a.m. Wednesday at C.R. Strunk Funeral Home Inc., 821 W. Broad St. in Quakertown. Burial will be at 1 p.m. Wednesday in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. Mr. Krout died when an armored humvee in which he was riding was hit by a road-bomb blast then veered into a ditch and flipped over, a National Guard spokesman said.