Marine from Colorado killed while trying to disarm bomb

Dick Foster, Rocky Mountain News

Published March 6, 2007 at midnight

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A former Coloradan on his fourth combat tour in Iraq was killed Friday while trying to disarm a bomb in Anbar province in the western part of the country.

Staff Sgt. Dustin M. Gould, 28, a 1997 graduate of Berthoud High School, was part of the 7th Engineer Support Battalion, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, from Camp Pendleton, Calif.

It was the second tragedy to befall Gould's father, David, of Georgia, this year. Another son was killed in Iraq in January.

Dustin Gould's latest deployment was in September and he was due home in April, said his sister, Bethany White, of Alma, Ark.

"He was just a good-hearted person," his sister said Monday. "He'd do anything for anybody, and he did, too. He gave his life for his platoon."

Gould was born in Oklahoma, but his family moved to Colorado in 1980. Jobs took the family to many parts of the state: Fort Collins, Greeley, Vail and Longmont, said his father.

Dustin Gould quickly signed up for the Marine Corps after graduating.

"In high school he didn't really know what he wanted to do, but he expressed that maybe spending four years in the military would give him some time to decide," David Gould said.

"He said, 'If I'm going into the military, I'm going into the elite, and that's the Marines.' "

Dustin Gould married eight years ago. His wife, Elizabeth, lives in California.

Gould was an explosives ordnance demolition technician, whose task is to destroy unexploded bombs.

"They can't get enough people trained fast enough to give them a longer time away (from Iraq)," David Gould said.

Added Bethany White: "He was very tired. They were all ready to come home."

The Marines credited Gould with neutralizing more than a million pounds of explosives that could have killed innumerable U.S. troops, his father said.

Gould kept in touch with his father every few days by e-mail and occasionally by phone.

He told his father, "You don't want to see what I've seen."

"It wasn't anything that they were doing wrong, but just the magnitude of being right there in it," his father said.

"His thoughts on it were, 'I hate being here, but I know that I have to be,' " his father said. "As far as my own personal view, I don't think it's fair."

David Gould's son, Army Spc. Jason J. Corbett, 23, of Casper, died Jan. 15 of injuries suffered in a firefight in Karmah, Iraq.

fosterd@RockyMountainNews.com or 719-633-4442

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