Army Sgt. Paul C. Neubauer

Died September 23, 2005 serving during Operation Iraqi Freedom

40, of Oceanside, Calif.; assigned to the 1st Battalion, 184th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division, California Army National Guard, Oakdale, Calif.; killed Sept. 23 when an improvised explosive device detonated near his M113 armored personnel carrier and enemy forces attacked with small-arms fire in Baghdad.

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Oceanside soldier killed in Iraq

Associated Press

OCEANSIDE, Calif. — Army Sgt. Paul C. Neubauer told his sister he wouldn’t make it out of Iraq alive.

“He said, ‘I have a feeling about this time that I won’t be coming back,”’ Neubauer’s sister, Elizabeth, recalled.

It was last November, and the Neubauers had gathered in Grand Junction, Colo., for their mother’s funeral.

“The comment really surprised me. It was so unlike him. I told him that he would be fine — he had seen combat numerous times — and that we would laugh about this on the front porch when he returned,” she said.

Paul Neubauer asked his sister to look after his wife and daughter.

On Sept. 23, a roadside bomb killed Neubauer, 40, of Oceanside and another soldier in the 184th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division, California Army National Guard, based in Oakdale.

“He was a really smart guy who did really bad in school,” Elizabeth Neubauer said. “But he taught himself Chinese and Greek when he was in junior high, and this was in western Colorado, where you aren’t exposed to that kind of thing.”

She said her brother loved being a soldier, studied military strategy and enjoyed working with younger, less-experienced soldiers on the front lines.

“He really thought that he was making every last one of us safe,” Elizabeth Neubauer said.