Chris Nettles of Starkville knows the McDavid family well having gone to school with Robert McDavid. McDavid’s son, Robert Taylor McDavid III was almost like one of Nettles’ family. So it is understandable why the death of Taylor McDavid March 10 while on patrol in Baghdad has hit Nettles so hard.
“I watched him grow up,” said Nettles by phone Wednesday afternoon. “He worked for me some at Mississippi State University and I sort of recruited him to join the Hamasa Shriners. I was real close to him and this hit me and the community very hard.”
McDavid, according to Nettles, is the first Hamasa Shriner to lose his life in the Iraq War.
The 29-year-old tank operator with the Army’s 164th Armored Division, 3rd Infantry was on foot patrol Monday with other soldiers in a shopping district of the predominantly Sunni Mansour neighborhood when a man in his 30s detonated his explosives about 30 feet away, said a police officer who witnessed the attack.
Four of the soldiers died at the scene, and the fifth died later from wounds, the military said. Three other American soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter were also wounded in the attack, which military spokesman Maj. Mark Cheadle said was “was reported to us as a suicide bomber.”
Iraqi police said two civilians also were killed.
McDavid was a past Master at the Abert Lodge in Starkville. He was a member of the Scottish and York Masonic bodies.
“His body is back in the states now and we are hoping it will arrive in Starkville sometime Friday,” said Nettles.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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