Mourners bury Indiana soldier killed in Baghdad

LOOGOOTEE, IND. -- Hundreds of mourners packed a small funeral home to remember an Indiana soldier who died when a Humvee overturned in a canal outside Baghdad.\nTo those who attended his funeral Tuesday in Loogootee, Cpl. Darrell Smith represented the best of military tradition: honor, duty and family.\n"I'm not here to change Darrell's life. I couldn't if I wanted to," said the Rev. Revis Eastham. "I'm here to encourage you and give you hope for the life that he lived and the death that he died."\nSmith, a gunner atop a Humvee for the Indiana National Guard, died Nov. 23, only days after returning to Iraq from a trip to his hometown of Otwell, about 35 miles northeast of Evansville.\nPhotographs of Smith with his wife and three children adorned the foyer of the funeral home. A snapshot of him in fatigues carrying his two youngest children was posted near another photo of him helping his daughter assemble an EZ-Bake Oven.\nHis wife, Amy Smith, was presented with Smith's Bronze Star and an American flag that covered his casket.\nLater, dozens of cars made a nearly 50-mile funeral procession to a cemetery in Augusta.\nMembers of a Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Loogootee stood at full attention on each side of the street as the procession rolled past their lodge.\nBusiness owners along the route paused to watch. Construction crews along U.S. 50 stopped to remove their hard hats as the procession, about two miles long, passed their work sites.\nSmith, 28, was the 16th person from Indiana to have died while serving in the Middle East during the war with Iraq.