How many more?

AP reports:

Soldier from Merrill killed by roadside bomb in Iraq

MERRILL, Wis. (AP) -- Pfc. Grant Allen Dampier wanted to do something special for his three young daughters - so he joined the U.S. Army.

"He joined so his kids would look up to him," his wife Heidi Dampier said Tuesday. "He wanted to be their hero."

The 25-year-old soldier from Merrill was one of two U.S. soldiers killed when his Humvee hit a roadside bomb Monday in Balad, Iraq, which is 50 miles north of Baghdad. Staff Sgt. Marion Flint Jr., 29, of Baltimore, Md. also was killed, according to the Pentagon.

Both were members of the 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team, based in Fort Carson, Colo.

Dampier was deployed in December and was expected to return home in September, said his sister, Rae Ann Dampier, 22.

His wife said before his first daughter, Alexis, was born five years ago, the former wrestler from Merrill High School mostly hung out with his friends.

After his second daughter, Starr, was born a year later, nothing brought her husband more joy than taking the girls fishing on the Wisconsin River, she said. And after his daughter Kylee was born last year, he decided to join the Army, she said.

"He really loved his kids," Heidi Dampier said.

"Right now they know that they're not going to see him but I don't think they know yet for how long," she said,

Grant Dampier was born in Wisconsin Rapids, where he wrestled in grade school, and came to Merrill when his family moved as he was beginning high school, his wife said.

Before the Army, Grant Dampier worked for Marathon Electric in Wausau and enjoyed the Green Bay Packers, hip-hop music and the Crandon Brush Run off-road truck races in Forest County.

He also took an interest in his wife's 7-year-old cousin, Justin Peterson, and treated the boy like a son, she said.

"He would take him places and they would play video games and wrestle and do all the boy stuff," she said.

Dampier is the third confirmed fatality among Wisconsin service members in Iraq this month and the 55th since the war began.

On May 5, Nathan J. Vacho, 29, a sergeant with the U.S. Army Reserve from Ladysmith, was killed in Baghdad when an improvised explosive device detonated near the Humvee he was in.

On Thursday, Eric D. Clark, 22, an Army specialist from Pleasant Prairie, was killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad. His funeral is scheduled for Saturday.

Casualty count.