First army nurse killed in combat since Vietnam laid to rest

[rnformatics]

The first nurse killed in combat since Vietnam was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetary yesterday:

(August 9, 2007)--The first Army nurse to be killed by enemy fire since the Vietnam War was buried with full honors Thursday.

Army Capt. Maria Ines Ortiz, 40, was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery, in Arlington, Va.

The Edgewood, Md., resident was killed July 10 during an insurgent attack in the Green Zone in Baghdad.

Shrapnel from an insurgents' mortar struck and killed Ortiz when she was returning from physical training.

Ortiz volunteered for duty in Iraq and was assigned to a combat surgical hospital in Baghdad last fall.

Ortiz worked for 18 months at an Army Health Clinic at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, before going to Iraq.

She also served from 2001 to 2003 as a dialysis nurse at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

Ortiz was born in New Jersey but actually grew in Puerto Rico.

She enlisted as a soldier with the Army Reserve in Puerto Rico in 1991 and began working in active duty in 1993.

Ortiz was commissioned as an officer in 1999.

The Aberdeen Clinic and the hospital in Baghdad have already held memorial services for Ortiz.

Ortiz was the first female nurse to die in combat in Iraq, 71 women in other specialties have been killed since the initial invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Friends and family gathered in the rain to bid farewell to the fallen soldier and family members accepted folded flags in her honor.

Ortiz was engaged to be married upon return from Iraq.