Spec. Jamal Rhett, 24; killed in Iraq

Michelle Watson saw the Army officers heading up the walkway toward her Palmyra home on Sunday and knew immediately.

"I said, 'No, no, no, no!' " Watson recalled. "I was hysterical."

She phoned her sister, Sonya Winters of Philadelphia, and said, " 'I'm not letting them in!' She was hollering and screaming," Winters said.

Watson's son, Army Spec. Jamal Rhett, 24, a combat medic, had been killed hours earlier in Ba Qubah, Iraq, after insurgents attacked his vehicle with grenades, according to the Defense Department.

"Bear with me. I've got to get myself together," Watson remembered telling the officers.

Rhett, a former Philadelphia resident who communicated with his family faithfully by phone and Facebook, came home Tuesday, about two months into his second deployment.

His remains, in a flag-draped casket, were carried solemnly from a plane during a "dignified transfer" ceremony that has played out hundreds of times at Dover Air Force Base.

"In my mind, I said, 'He did this for country and honor.' He was my knight in shining armor," said Watson, 49, recalling the ceremony she attended with Rhett's father, Thornell Rhett.

After news of the soldier's death, the sidewalks in the courtyard at his condo community were lined with small American flags.

"I dropped everything when I heard," said Winters, 48. "My heart was racing as I crossed the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge" on Sunday. "I tried to console her."

Rhett is at least the 25th member of the military from South Jersey to die in the Iraq war. Ten others from South Jersey have died in Afghanistan.

During his Iraq deployments, Rhett remained in close contact with the family and liked hearing even the most mundane news.

"He loved family and friends," Watson said. "He enjoyed making people laugh. He was just a good man . . . well-mannered and very well-liked."

Rhett was excited when he called Watson last Wednesday. "It looked like he was going to be promoted to sergeant," she said. "He sounded good."

Winters spoke to him on Thursday and told him "about a party we were throwing for my 19-year-old who is going to college, and he congratulated me," she said.

"He wanted to know about everybody back home and talked a little about what he was doing," Winters said. "If he was going to be out in the desert, he'd tell us he would be out a few days and would call when he got back."

For security reasons, Rhett "didn't talk a lot" about what he was doing, she said. "He did say he saw things he never wanted to see again."

Rhett moved from Philadelphia to Palmyra with his mother when he was 11 and attended public schools, including Burlington County Institute of Technology in Westampton, where he was a computer science major.

"He was a good citizen, a positive member of our school community," said BCIT superintendent Dolores Szymanski. "He participated in freshman basketball and was a very respectful young man with a really positive attitude."

The loss has affected the whole school, which immediately lowered its U.S. flags to half-staff, she said.

"This is every mother's worst nightmare," added Szymanski, who said she has a son about the same age. "It's just too close when you see a young man cut down in his prime. It hurts your heart."

Rhett graduated from BCIT in 2003, and attended Bloomfield College and Burlington County College before enlisting in the Army.

He served with the First Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment, Second Brigade Combat Team, of the 25th Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii.

Winters remembered visiting Rhett in Palmyra just before his first deployment. "He told me and his mom, 'I'm not afraid to die,' " she said. "We asked him, 'Why did you say that?'

"He said, 'That's life.' Whatever happened, he wasn't afraid."

While Rhett was in Iraq, he received a steady stream of care packages.

"He loved Tastykakes," Winters said. "The ones with the chocolate icing with vanilla stripes were his favorite. I would send him five or six boxes of Tastykakes and he would share them."

Little luxuries like that helped make the tough duty more tolerable. But sometimes even they were not enough.

"He talked about being in the desert and told his mom that the baby wipes 'weren't getting it,' " Winters recalled. "He said he needed to get back to the base so he could get a bath. He was a very clean person."

Rhett had planned "to do his time [in the Army] and get out," Winters said. "He wanted to go into the medical field."

"He was following in my footsteps," said Watson, a nurse.

In May, days before he was to begin his second tour, Winters said she saw something new in Rhett.

He "had a sadness in his eyes," she said. "He didn't want to go back to Iraq, but he felt it was his duty."

In Palmyra, one of Watson's neighbors remembered happier times.

"When Jamal came home on leave, we'd put the flags out for him," said Mary Anne Eaton. "Now they're out to honor and remember him."

Funeral arrangements are incomplete. Services are expected to take place at Evergreen Baptist Church in Palmyra with burial in Chelten Hills Cemetery in Philadelphia's West Oak Lane section.