Pike County Marine killed in Iraq fighting

LACKAWAXEN - “All of Lackawaxen is just devastated,” a friend of the Beisel family said Wednesday on the news of the death in Iraq of Marine Lance Corporal Jacob Walter Beisel. The Department of Defense on April 5 confirmed that Beisel died March 31 from wounds received while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. He was assigned to Third Battalion, Eighth Marine Regiment, Second Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C. No other details were available. Beisel is the second Pike County soldier to die in Iraq. Army National Guard 1st Lt. Louis E. Allen, 34, of Milford died in Tikrit, Iraq, on June 8 of 2005, in an explosives incident which is still under investigation. As of April 5, the Defense Department has confirmed 2,344 military deaths in the Iraq War. Beisel’s obituary follows: Lance Corporal Jacob Walter Beisel of Lackawaxen, a Marine and lifetime resident of Lackawaxen, died Friday, March 31, 2006 in Iraq. He was 21. He was born September 27, 1984, in Honesdale, the son of Albert and Mary Johanson Beisel. A 2003 graduate of Wallenpaupack High School, he joined the Marine Corps Sept. 8, 2003. He served a tour in Haiti and was serving his second tour in Iraq. He is survived by his parents, Albert and Mary Beisel of Lackawaxen; his sister, Amanda Beisel of Lackawaxen and his grandmother, Doris Johanson of Lackawaxen. He is further survived by more than 100 aunts, uncles and cousins. Funeral services will be held on Friday, April 7, with a Mass of Christian Burial at 11 a.m. in St. Ann’s R.C. Church in Shohola, with Rev. Phillip Rayappan officiating. Burial will be at St. Mark´s Cemetery, in Lackawaxen. Funeral arrangements are by the Gray-Rasmussen Funeral Home, Route 97, Barryville, N.Y. For information or to send a condolence note to the family, visit www.grayparkerfuneralhome.com .