Marine Cpl. Terrence P. Allen

Died September 15, 2007 serving during Operation Iraqi Freedom

21, of Pennsauken, N.J.; assigned to 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C.; died Sept. 15 from a non-hostile incident in Asad, Iraq.

Pennsauken Marine slated to return home soon killed in Iraq

The Associated Press

PENNSAUKEN, N.J. — A Marine from Pennsauken who just hours earlier had been talking with his parents about his impending return home was killed in Iraq on Sept. 14.

Cpl. Terry Allen was shot in the head while he was on the Al Asad Air Base in Anbar province, apparently by a sniper, his parents said Sept. 15.

John and Connie Allen said they’d just talked with their son hours before he was shot, and that the 21-year-old was scheduled to come home from Iraq on Sept. 18.

“We really thought we were in the clear,” John Allen told the Courier-Post of Cherry Hill for the Sept. 16 newspapers. “We thought about how lucky we were he was coming home.”

Terry Allen, a former football player at Bishop Eustace Preparatory School, enlisted in the Marines before he even graduated from high school in 2004.

“He was a nice kid. It’s just going to affect everybody,” Tori Wishnick, the school’s athletic director told The Philadelphia Inquirer. “It’s just so shocking.”

The South Jersey Marine’s body is scheduled to be flown to Dover Air Force Base early this week.