ATLANTA — Elmer “Mo” Youngblood wasn’t sure why his sailor son wanted to leave relatively safe duty aboard a ship to be a combat medic in Iraq.
“For some reason or another, he wanted to be a corpsman,” Youngblood said of his son, Petty Officer 3rd Class Travis Levy Youngblood.
Travis Youngblood, 26, died Thursday in a military hospital from shrapnel wounds.
He was a medic with a Marine unit in the Iraqi town of Hit when an “improvised explosive device” sent shrapnel into his legs and throat on July 15, according to the Department of Defense.
“I was tickled to death with him being in the Navy,” Elmer Youngblood, a former Navy man, said from his home in Surrency, in southeast Georgia. “I wasn’t too happy when he basically volunteered to go over there, but it was his choice.”
Travis Youngblood grew up mostly in Virginia. He attended Appling County...