Date: 3/30/2006
Rank: Technical Sergeant
Branch: U.S. Air Force
Operation: Operation Iraqi Freedom
Tech. Sgt. Walter M. Moss Jr., 37 died Wednesday while trying to defuse a homemade bomb near Baghdad, said Capt. Kelly Cahalan, a spokeswoman for the Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho. Moss was assigned to the 366th Civil Engineer Squadron on the base.
Moss joined the Air Force in 1990 after graduating from Aldine High School near Houston and served in Operation Desert Storm. He specialized in detecting and defusing makeshift bombs and always tried to protect the younger members of his team, said his brother, Brian Moss. “He let us know that he was doing a very important job,” Brian Moss said. “I am sure what he was doing was a job that he didn’t want anybody else to do – that is the kind of person he was.”
Walter lived in Idaho with his wife and two children, a son and a daughter. He was the first Mountain Home airman to be killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom.