BRADLEY D. RAPPUHN
August 8, 2010
Name:
SPC Bradley D. Rappuhn
Hometown:
Lansing, Michigan
DOB:
April 24, 1986
DOP:
August 8, 2010
Entered Service:
January 2009
Deployments:
Bradley deployed once to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.
Units:
75th Ranger Regiment/3rd Ranger Battalion.
Education:
One Station Unit Training at Fort Benning as an infantryman, the Basic Airborne Course, and the Ranger Assessment and Selection Program also at Fort Benning.
Awards & Decorations:
Rappuhn’s awards and decorations include the Combat Infantryman Badge and the Parachutist Badge. He was also awarded the Army Achievement Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Afghanistan Campaign Medal with Combat Star, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, and Army Service Ribbon. He was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star Medal, Meritorious Service Medal and Purple Heart.
Survived By:
Rapphun is survived by his father, Cary Rappuhn, of Potterville, Mich., and his mother, Roxanne Rappuhn and his brother, Brent Rappuhn, both of Grand Ledge.
Honoree Bio:
Spc. Bradley David Rappuhn, 24, died Aug. 8 after an attack by insurgents in Afghanistan, according to the Defense Department. This was his first deployment.
Rappuhn, an Army Ranger, was serving in Kandahar province when his unit was attacked with an improvised explosive device. He and another solider were treated immediately by unit medical personnel and evacuated to the nearest treatment facility, where they died.
""He was supposed to come home in the end of July,"" said his mother, Roxanne Rappuhn, 53, of Grand Ledge. ""But they tacked 45 more days on.""
Her son already had been wounded this year and still carried around shrapnel from that Memorial Day attack shrapnel that doctors apparently thought couldn’t be removed, Roxanne Rappuhn said. But he was easygoing, she said. ""If he were here right now, he’d be telling me to suck it up,"" she said.
Rappuhn’s family knew nothing of what he did or where he went in his job other than he was serving in Afghanistan with the elite 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, out of Fort Benning, Ga.
Col. Michael Kurilla, commander of the 75th Ranger Regiment, said Rappuhn was fighting in one of the most heavily defended areas in Afghanistan and that he helped in the destruction of a complex bunker system that included heavy machine guns and mortar systems and resulted in the deaths of seven Taliban fighters.
He called Rappuhn a hero.
