Norwood native dies in an Iraq bombing
Joel E. Cahill was about 8 years old when he and his family moved from Norwood. He was 34 years old when he died in Iraq, a captain in the US Army, serving his fourth tour of combat duty since the Afghanistan war began in 2001.
''He was an all-around good guy," Cahill's older brother, Randall, said in a telephone interview yesterday from Nebraska, where most of the Cahill family is now living. ''The country lost a good one."
According to a statement from the Pentagon and the military command in Iraq, Cahill was riding in a Humvee in the town of Dawr on Sunday when an improvised bomb detonated. His family said Cahill was riding in the front passenger seat and that he was the only fatality; the driver and three others sustained minor injuries.
Cahill was assigned to the Army's First Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment, Third Brigade, Third Infantry Division, headquartered in Fort Benning, Ga., according to the Pentagon.
Yesterday, Randall Cahill said his parents, Larry and Barbara Cahill, were in Georgia to be with their son's widow, Mary, and the couple's two young daughters, Faith and Brenna. Randall Cahill said his parents grew up in Norwood and that they had moved because his father worked for
The moving ended when the family of five children landed in the Omaha area, where Joel Cahill graduated from high school and enlisted in the Army about a year later.
Eight years after that, he joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps at the program jointly run by Creighton University and the University of Nebraska, graduated and was commissioned as an officer. Cahill was in the Army for 15 years, his family said.
Since 2001, Cahill served two tours of duty in Afghanistan and was on his second tour in Iraq. During his Afghanistan assignment, Cahill was an officer with an elite Ranger unit and was awarded a Bronze Star for valor, his family said.
''He was kind of tight-lipped about everything he did in the service," said Randy Cahill. ''He wasn't one to brag about anything, he kind of downplayed everything. . . . That's just the kind of guy he was, a kind of a quiet guy. Very funny. Very dry sense of humor."
Dawr is near Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown, and is the town where Hussein was captured in 2003. According to Pentagon press statements, Cahill and the company he led were participating in Task Force Band of Brothers, searching for insurgents.
While polls suggest that public support for the war may be eroding, Cahill had no such doubts, his brother said.
''He supported it 100 percent. He thought what they were doing was right and just," said Randy Cahill.
He said his family often worried about Cahill, but that during this combat deployment, he wasn't that worried. ''It's still kind of unreal to me," he said of his younger brother's death.
Cahill will be laid to rest at the Arlington National Cemetery on Nov. 18, his family said.
