Wagler, Peter (1987-2006)

Mennonite Weekly Review obituary: 2006 Mar 6 p. 1

Birth date: 1987

Soldier's death hits close to home for plain community

By Robert Rhodes

Mennonite Weekly Review

Partridge, Kan. — When Peter Wagler joined the Army in September 2004, it wasn't the career choice his parents would have preferred.

The country was at war in Iraq, and the family's faith heritage taught that taking up the sword or doing other violence is wrong.

Still, the intelligent 17-year-old — home-schooled, precocious and brimming with initiative — had his mid made up. convincing his family to accept his decision was another matter.

But his father, David — raised in the nonresistant Old Order and Beachy Amish churches — finally had decided that instead of hearing out another of his son's proposals and counter-proposals for enlisting, he would take his leading from the Bible.

The previous Father's Day, David Wagler said, he had been impressed by a Sunday school lesson on the story of the Prodigal Son — "how the father held his son with an open hand," Wagler said Feb. 22. "He gave his son his inheritance, even though he did not agree with his son."

Despite his own objections to military service, Wagler signed the age waiver required for his son's enlistment, and Peter began basic training at Fort Knox, Ky.

"Peter was not rebellious," Wagler said. "But we felt God was asking us to hold Peter with an open hand."

Assigned to Company D, 1st Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment of the 4th Brigade Combat Team, Peter served on the crew of an M1A2 Abrams tank. In December, his unit deployed to Kuwait from For Hood, Texas.

During a phone conversation on New Year's Eve, his parents learned their son was calling from somewhere inside Iraq. Peter phone often, friends said, including a call to his mother on Jan. 20.

But when Cpl. Wagler was killed in Baghdad on Jan. 23 — the victim, along with another soldier, of a roadside bomb that tore into his tank's most vulnerable area — his parents' worst fears were realized. His death also struck at the heart of the plain community the family came from.

Remembered by his friends as someone who loved the outdoors and was an expert mechanic, Peter Wagler was buried in Partridge Community Cemetery on Feb. 10, on what would have been his 19th birthday.

In attendance at the funeral at First Church of the Nazarene in Hutchinson were a number of people from local Beachy Amish congregations, who also provided a meal for funeral guests afterward.

"Our church very intentionally said we want tor each out to the family and show that we care," said David L. Miller, a minister and elder at Center Amish Mennonite Church, a Beachy congregation at Partridge.

Though some Beachy church members felt it was not appropriate to attend the services because of the military presence there, Miller said most had no reservations about attending, including him.