Military escort Larry Doucette of Staples had the honor of serving as the escort officer for a central Minnesota soldier killed in Iraq. (Staples World photo) A Staples man, a sergeant in the Army Reserve, this week served as the offi- cial military escort for the remains of a fellow Army Reserve soldier killed Easter Sunday in Iraq.

“It was an awesome experience, an awesome ceremony,”said First Sergeant Larry Doucette, a 30 year member of the Army Reserve.

Doucette learned Thursday, April 8, that he was chosen for this duty. From early Friday afternoon, when he caught a flight out of Brainerd, until late Monday he escorted the remains of Sgt. Kurt Kruize, a resident of St. Cloud and a member of the Army Reserve’s 367th Engineering Batallion.

Early Friday, before leaving to fly to Philadelphia and the nearby Dover Air Force Base, Doucette was unaware of many details.

“But everything went very smoothly. It was so smooth, it was unbelievable,” he said this week between meetings of his Army Reserve unit. He said it was a good example of military planning and precision.

Once he arrived at Dover Air Force base, Doucette was seldom out of sight of the casket bearing the soldier’s remains. Sgt. Kruize’s remains were flown, with Doucette as escort, from Dover Air Force Base in Maryland, back to Minnesota on Saturday. Currently Doucette, who has served one tour of duty in Afghanistan, is the senior Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO) with the 367th’s rear detachment, those members of the unit who were not deployed to Iraq. Consequently, this assignment fell to him. Since he was a fellow NCO, Doucette said, “Our brigade commander said it was appropriate for me to escort him home.”

For this escort duty, Doucette changed from his normal army ACU (Army Combat Uniform) to full dress greens.

Sgt. Kurt Kruize would have been 36 in June. He grew up in the west-central Minnesota town of Hancock, the son of Lyle and Beverly Kruize. He joined the Reserves as a junior in high school in 1992.

Sgt. Kruize’s wife, Billie Jo, said she and her four children, ages two though 13, learned her husband was killed in a non-combat, military accident in Baghdad.

Kurt Kruize’s father said his son was crushed between a tractor and a trailer.

“They called it a freak accident,” he said.

Funeral services for Kruize were held at 10:30 a.m. Monday at St. Mary’s Cathedral in St. Cloud. Visitation was from 4-9 p.m. Sunday at Williams Dingmann Family Funeral Home and after 9:30 a.m. Monday at the church.

Doucette said he was joined for the reviewal and funeral service by 14 volunteer members of the 397th Engineer Battalion from Wisconsin. “They were all volunteering their time to be there,” he emphasized, serving as a full military honor guard.

Kruize moved to St. Cloud in 1993. He worked at Mills Fleet Farm. His sister Tammy introduced him to Billie Jo Rosenbush, a 1993 graduate of St. Cloud’s Technical High School.

He was trained as an auto mechanic and had worked as a forklift operator at Viking Coca-Cola in St. Cloud since May 2007.

Kurt Kruize served his first tour in Iraq for 11 months in 2003. He left for his second tour Jan. 17. He trained in Texas and he shipped out for Iraq in March.

Lyle Kruize said he sometimes thought about the dangers his son confronted in a war zone.

“You always worry about that. You’re always getting reports on TV, people are getting hurt. You never think it is going to happen to your kid, you know,” Kruize said.

(Portions of this article were taken from St. Cloud Times articles.)