Dead soldier wanted to teach

One of the U.S. nine soldiers killed in the fierce battle Sunday that has refocused U.S. leaders' attention on Afghanistan was from Alamance County, just west of the Triangle.

Cpl. Pruitt A. Rainey of Haw River, a former heavyweight wrestler who hoped to become a teacher one day, was among the dead identified Wednesday in a Pentagon news release.

Rainey, 22, and his Italy-based unit were supposed to be in Afghanistan for only a couple more weeks, his uncle, David Gordon, said Wednesday afternoon. Instead, Rainey was among a small group of U.S. and Afghan soldiers who found themselves outnumbered in a pre-dawn surprise attack so devastating that some of the Taliban insurgents were able to fight their way inside the NATO compound.

According to The New York Times, there were about 200 attackers armed with automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. Defending the small base and a nearby observation post were just 45 Americans and 25 Afghan soldiers. Among those who survived, 15 Americans and four Afghans were wounded.

Rainey was reared by his grandmother, Linda Kearney, though his parents are still alive, said his pastor, the Rev. Larry Redding, minister of Glen Hope Baptist Church in Burlington.

"He was just the sunshine of her life, such a good young man," Redding said. "She's just absolutely devastated."

Rainey was on the wrestling team at Graham High School and graduated in 2004 after a senior season that left him among the state's top-ranked wrestlers.

He attended Campbell University, where he was on the wrestling team, but left after a year and joined the Army in 2005, Gordon said.

He was stationed with the 503rd Airborne Regiment in Italy and deployed to Afghanistan in May 2007. He was expected to visit home in late August in time for his grandmother's birthday, and to eventually transfer from Italy to Fort Bragg, Gordon said.

Rainey was widely loved in the area, Redding said.

"We were just ill when we heard what had happened," Redding said. "Everybody loved him. He touched a lot of lives, and the whole community was just shocked."

Rainey was a sunny giant, and children were drawn to him, Redding said. In turn, Rainey was making plans to become a teacher when he got out of the Army.

The attack Sunday was part of a recent wave of violence in the country. It shook U.S. leaders not just because of the high number of U.S. dead -- the most in any attack in Afghanistan since 2005 -- but also for the size of the enemy force and the sophistication of its planning.

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain said Tuesday that several thousand additional U.S. troops should be sent to bolster the forces in Afghanistan, a position that his presumptive opponent, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama already had taken in an op-ed article in The New York Times on Monday.

Obama said he would move those troops from Iraq. Later McCain seemed to soften the idea of a U.S. buildup, and said NATO allies should send more troops, too.