A soldier comes home

His first trip back from a tour in Iraq was a joyous occasion. His second, full of sorrow.

	[Times photos: Bob Croslin] U.S. Marines move the casket of Serio to a waiting hearse at T.F. Green Airport in Providence, R.I.

Megan Morin, the girlfriend of Lance Cpl. Matthew K. Serio, is comforted by Marissa D'onofrio, left, and Jackie Arnazian, right.

Megan Morin wraps her arms around Sharon Serio as they and Navy 3rd Class Petty Officer A.J. Serio listen to 1st Sgt. Todd Parisi while waiting for the plane to arrive with the body of Matthew K. Serio.

Sharon Serio cleans up a memorial to her son Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew K. Serio in the front room of her North Providence home.

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NORTH PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Lance Cpl. Matthew K. Serio had come home once before from Iraq. That was last spring, when the weather was fine and his parents were thankful, and he returned with tales of conquest in battle and the braggadocio to match.

This time, on Monday, he was met at the airport by seven Marines who gently tucked his casket into a black hearse as his family and friends watched and wept.

Serio, 21, was one of 12 Marines killed in three days of fighting this month near Fallujah, just three weeks after his battalion arrived for its second tour in Iraq. His comrades say he went down shooting.

"It's hard to be proud and sad at the same time," Navy 3rd Class Petty Officer A.J. Serio, 23, Matt's brother, said as they waited for the plane.

It is a scene being played out around the country this week, as the bodies of the growing number of Marines and soldiers killed in Iraq are shipped back home. This month, 88 U.S. troops have died there. On April 5, the day Matt Serio was killed by shrapnel from a rocket-propelled grenade, three other Marines in his unit of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division, also died near Fallujah:

Cpl. Jesse L. Thiry, 23, of Casco, Wis., had passed up an assignment as a weapons instructor at Quantico, Va., and instead chose a rifle company in Iraq. He was one of eight children, was engaged to be married and planned to leave the Marines in November.

Lance Cpl. Christopher Ramos, 26, of Albuquerque, N.M., had an 18-month-old daughter named Malaya and had planned to become a police officer in his hometown.

Lance Cpl. Shane L. Goldman of Orange, Texas, came from a long line of Marines and had enlisted to carry on the family tradition. He would have turned 20 this week.

It was Monday morning when the Serios learned Matt's body would arrive at the Providence airport that afternoon.

Matt's three best friends from high school - Michael DeTora, Jason Ruiz and Ryan McDermott - joined A.J. and the color guard on the tarmac, while a dozen relatives and friends watched just off the runway, behind a chain-link fence.

The sky was low and overcast, and it occasionally spit drops of rain. A raw wind ripped across the tarmac. For nearly an hour they hunched their shoulders against the cold, and huddled in knots of warmth.

Matt's dad, Anthony Serio Sr., wore a Marine Corps windbreaker. His mother, Sharon, wore a USMC Mom sweatshirt. This was her first time outside the house since she got the news.

When the US Airways jet pulled into gate C-3 about 4:30, the little knots unraveled and the relatives stood shoulder to shoulder, each clinging to the next.

Through the fence, they watched luggage chug down the ramp to the baggage car. Then the baggage car zoomed away and the Marines marched to the ramp. A large white box wrapped in a thin black ribbon slid down. The Marines lifted the box into the waiting hearse and closed the door.

For nearly a week, Matt Serio's death had been almost abstract. The sight of the box made it real. Matt was in that box, and those who hadn't really cried yet began to cry. It only got worse when the hearse pulled into a cargo hangar and the Marines took the gray steel casket from the box, then draped it with an American flag.

Nine Rhode Island state troopers escorted the hearse to the Nardolillo Funeral Home in nearby Cranston. Matt's dog tags were tied to a handle on the front of the casket, and they plinked against the steel as the Marines slowly marched it inside.

North Providence is a middle-class, largely Italian-American town where you can still get fresh milk delivered to your door. The Serios live in a blue clapboard house with two stories and a basement and Marine and Navy flags flying from the front. It sits at the end of a dead-end street lined with homes much like it, just around the corner from Town Hall, where the U.S. flag flies at half-staff in Matt Serio's honor.

Matt and his brothers were born and raised here. All through high school, their home was the chief gathering place for their friends, who would spend entire weekends in the basement rec room, going home only to shower. Then McDermott fixed the downstairs shower so they didn't need to leave at all.

When the Marine first sergeant came last Tuesday morning to tell the Serios about Matt, Mr. and Mrs. Serio already had left for work. A neighbor directed him to the bank where Mrs. Serio is a teller. He asked her to call her husband and come home.

This is a close-knit town and word spread quickly. As he often did, McDermott had stopped by the house between classes at the community college to bring in the milk and let out the dogs. As soon as he saw Mrs. Serio there, he knew. Out at Camp Pendleton, Calif., Cpl. Ruiz got the call from a high school friend. Michael DeTora got the call from his mom.

Meanwhile, in the Pacific, aboard the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, the news on the TV in A.J. Serio's workshop was saying a dozen Marines had been killed near Fallujah. A friend asked if that's where his brother was, then A.J.'s chief pulled him into an office and broke the news.

Again, the Serios' home became the gathering place. Matt's little league baseball coach brought a picture of him as a youngster, swinging the bat. Teachers from as far back as grade school brought flowers. Neighbors brought food. U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy, D-R.I., brought a U.S. flag that had flown over the Capitol, neatly folded into a triangle and encased in wood and glass.

A makeshift shrine on a table in the foyer grew into a dazzling array of stargazer lillies and red carnations and roses and purple gladiolas, interspersed with pictures of Matt and his Marine Corps memorabilia, including the Purple Heart.

There's a photo of Matt and A.J. at home on leave, posing stoically in their uniforms with their younger brother, Chris, 19. Matt cradling his big M-249 machine gun. Matt's platoon standing triumphantly atop the rubble of one of Saddam Hussein's palaces shortly after the Marines invaded Baghdad.

In the basement, its blue walls battered by a lifetime of boys, his friends have built their own little shrine, a young man's shrine of beer steins and souvenir shot glasses. Matt Serio was a Marine, after all, not a choir boy. He was rambunctious and liked to drink - "Party like a rock star," he'd say.

The night before the wake, friends and family crowded down there, telling stories and laughing at a video of Matt as a kid, maybe 8, lip-synching to Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA. He was funny, honest and loyal. In high school, when the guys would stay up into the wee hours in the basement, they all would promise to help DeTora with his paper route so he would stay, too. But only Matt would get up at dawn to do it.

They recalled the night Mrs. Serio thundered downstairs to quiet them down, and Matt passed out in mid-sentence while assuring her all was well.

Matt was a strapping, good-looking young man with dark eyes, a sharp dresser who insisted on ironing his clothes, even in high school. He had talked vaguely about becoming a cop, but friends and family say he thrived in the Marines, and they suspect he would have done another four years. He and Ruiz had enlisted together the fall of their senior year, in 2000, then reported to boot camp at Parris Island, S.C., a year later.

Ruiz went into military intelligence, while Matt chose the infantry. It suited him. He liked the physicality of it, the grit it required to excel. He was never much of a student, his parents said, but he was an athlete, a star linebacker and offensive lineman for the North Providence football team.

"Matt was a great Marine. He loved it, and the infantry is hard to love," Ruiz said. "They treat those guys like dirt, because they're so hard. ... And he loved it, in the dirt. Matt loved stuff like that. Out of any bad thing, he made a good thing."

He had some close calls his first tour in Iraq. After Matt gave his seat in a troop carrier to another Marine, that section of the vehicle was hit by an RPG, injuring the other Marine. He told his brother about bullets whizzing overhead, told Ruiz about door-to-door fighting in Baghdad, never knowing who was around the corner.

When his unit returned to Camp Pendleton, Calif., last May, his mother couldn't wait for him to come home to North Providence, even though it would be only a couple more weeks. She hopped a flight to San Diego. "She had to go make sure he didn't have any holes in him," Mr. Serio recalled. "She wanted to touch him."

The day after Lance Cpl. Serio's body arrived, a cold rain lashed the streets as A.J. and his dad drove to the funeral home to plan the burial, and to take their first and final look inside the casket. "I wanted to see him," his brother said. "I hadn't got to see him in a while."

Matt was killed by shrapnel to the back of the head. The Marines had put him in his dress blues, pinned his ribbons and medals to his chest, and fixed him up as best they could, but there was no question about an open casket. Instead the family set a picture on top for Thursday night's wake, to remember him as he had been, vibrant and alive.

Last spring, the F-14 Tomcats and F-18 Hornets that roared off the Kitty Hawk's flight deck had supported Matt's battalion as it pushed into Iraq. A.J. Serio, who cleans the jet fuel so it burns nice and hot, said that made his job very real.

The brothers had spent just 10 days together over the past three years, because of all the trouble in the world. Their last visit was four days at home in August, when their leaves coincided, and they swapped war stories and enjoyed just being together. But as much as they liked the military, they urged their younger brother, Chris, to go to college instead.

Mr. Serio seems glad of that. He is a sturdy, soft-spoken lead MRI technician with thick black hair and glasses who is as reserved as his son was outgoing. He got his last e-mail from Matt the night before he died, and as usual it was short in words and details. He asked for more long-cut Skoal and chocolate chip cookies, as well as candy for the Iraqi children. He specifically asked for marshmallow Peeps. Mr. Serio chuckled: "They hold up."

The Serios are not particularly political, but Mr. Serio said he supported the war in Iraq, and he still does. Tuesday night, during President Bush's televised press conference, he and his family were glad the president vowed to stay the course. All this week, Matt's unit has faced intense combat in Fallujah.

"Matthew wasn't fighting in vain," he said. "Maybe the Iraqis can't see it right now, why we're there."

On one corner of Mr. Serio's collar was a Gold Star that matched his wife's, the badge of a parent who has lost a child in combat. "You have to have people like Matthew," he said. "I always thought that. Maybe I wouldn't have been a good soldier, personally. But you need people like Matthew."

If he could talk to him now, Mr. Serio said, he would tell him that he'll miss him. Matt had found focus and discipline in the Marines, and Mr. Serio was pleased their relationship was evolving beyond that of a father and son. Last winter, Matt vacationed with his parents in Las Vegas.

"He was becoming more of a man," Mr. Serio said. "Maybe more of a friend to us."

Several funeral homes are closer to the Serios' home than Nardolillo's, but it's the largest in the area, and they knew they would need the space for Thursday's wake. It started at 4 p.m. By 5, several hundred mourners had already come to pay their respects, pausing briefly at the gray steel casket to shake hands with his relatives.

The funeral is this morning. St. Lawrence, the neighborhood parish where Matt and his brothers were baptized, was too small for the expected crowd, so the service will be at the massive stone Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul in downtown Providence.

The Marines had offered to bury Matt at the veterans' cemetery in Exeter, R.I., but the Serios declined. Instead they bought a plot in a cemetery close to home, where they can visit as often as they like. They bought four more plots with it, one for each member of the family, Mr. Serio said. "We didn't want him to be alone."

- Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

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