JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Family, friends and a church family are grieving for a 20-year-old Marine private from Jacksonville who was killed Monday when roadside bomb went off near his convoy in Iraq.
Pfc. Nathan Clemons was a graduate of Terry Parker High School and an active member of the University Boulevard Church of the Nazarene.
"It was just such a shock for all of us, and then to break that news," said Clemons pastor, Mike Jackson.
Friends said Clemons -- they called him Nate or Nate-Dog -- joined the Marine Corps after graduation and was passionate about the military.
"Fun -- he always looking to have a good time. Blunt -- he'd tell you how it was," friend Stephanie Strong said. "It still hasn't sunk in, at all."
He had written home from Iraq saying it was scary, but that he liked the people he was serving with and believed in the mission.
"Obviously, in a time of war, when he enlisted, he knew what he was getting into," Strong told Channel 4's Heather Murphy Capps.
Clemons' father said Nathan had called him the morning before the mission. He said he had a feeling that day's mission in the al-Anbar province would be dangerous, so he called to tell his parents he loved them.
He told his father that if he didn't make it through the day, he was OK with that.
"I have my faith; my spirituality is in order," he told his father.
"I thank God every day for people like him," friend Ashleigh Kehrt said.
Clemons was due home in the fall.
Funeral arrangements are not complete, but will likely be held in Tennessee, where he parents now live.
As of Tuesday, June 14, at least 1,707 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. At least 1,300 died as a result of hostile action, according to the Defense Department. The figures include five military civilians.
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