Robert Taylor McDavid III of Starkville, MS was killed

March 10 while on patrol in Baghdad.

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. McDavid, according to Nettles, is the first Hamasa Shriner to lose his life in the Iraq War.