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Joseph C. Nurre was once eating lunch with the other first-string football stars when he saw a freshman sitting alone at another cafeteria table, terrified at his first day of school.

Nurre brought the kid over to join him and the team.

“He was just an awesome kid,” said Mike Clemons, his football coach. “He was a soldier. A soldier on the football field. A soldier in the war. He’s my hero now.”

Nurre, 22, of Wilton, Calif., was killed Aug. 21 near Samarra by a roadside bomb. He graduated high school in 2001 and was based at Weirton. Despite his 5-foot-9-inch frame and 170 pounds, he became a

defensive lineman on the football team. He was so well liked he became team captain. “If you told him to be in the weight room at 6, he would be there at 5,” Clemons said.

“He took definite aim on what he was going to do.”

After high school,...