UPDATE 04-28-08 FUNERAL INFORMATION:
Monday 1400hrs (2:00pm)
There will be a Memorial Service at:
Shorter Funeral Home
1905 South Main St
Farmville, VA

Prayers up.

The Patriot Guard Riders had this report:

Saturday
We had about 30 or so at the Airport. The Bikes were lined up on the tarmac. A small private Jet landed and taxied over to the tarmac. We set up a flag line on either side of the cargo door and stood at attention as the Honor Guard gently unloaded Cpl Yale out of the plane into the Hearse. A surreal moment.
Everyone together being part of the bigger picture, brought Cpl Jonathan T. Yale Home to His Family with the Dignity and Honor He deserves.

The PGR will also stage a flag line and escort Cpl. Yale and his family to the cemetery today.

The following account is harrowing. Cpl. Yale and LCpl. Haerter stood their ground and saved 54 Marines and soldiers from a horrible VBIED explosion.

IRAQ: Without hesitation
Los Angeles Times

Two young Marines killed in the explosion of a suicide vehicle are being praised for saving the lives of dozens of Marines and Iraqi police by preventing the vehicle from penetrating a police compound in Ramadi.

Lance Cpl. Jordan C. Haerter (above) and Cpl. Jonathan T. Yale were standing guard early Tuesday morning when a blue dump truck packed with 2,000 pounds of explosives came speeding toward the compound. The two quickly went through the “escalation of force” procedures: waving their arms, shouting and shooting flares.

When the truck refused to stop, Haerter and Yale stood in its path and opened fire. The truck rolled to a stop about 30 feet from the entry point and exploded, spreading destruction about 130 feet in all directions, demolishing a mosque and injuring 20 Iraqi civilians.

Haerter, 19, of Sag Harbor, N.Y., was killed instantly. Yale, 21, of Burkeville, Va., died moments later. Both were from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force, based at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

An official after-action report says the two acted without hesitation or concern for their own lives and saved the lives of 33 Marines and 21 Iraqi police inside the compound:

“Recognizing the danger to their fellow Marines and partnered Iraqi police, Cpl. Yale and Lance Cpl. Haerter fearless gave their lives in their defense.”

From the Washington Post:

VIRGINIA NATIVE
Marine, 21, Is Killed in Iraq
Mother Says ‘Class Clown’ Tried to Bring Happiness
By Daniela Deane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 26, 2008; Page B06

Jonathan Yale was close to his mother, a single parent who gave birth to him when she was only 17. And he was the kind of guy who liked to make people happy, she said.

“He was the class clown, even when he wasn’t at school,” his mother, Rebecca Yale, said yesterday. “But he also didn’t mind sitting home with his momma to watch a chick flick with a box of Kleenex between us. He was the best boy you could ask for.”

Yale, a 21-year-old corporal from Burkeville, Va., was one of two Marines who died Tuesday in Iraq of wounds suffered in combat operations in Anbar province, the Department of Defense said yesterday.

Yale, who was stationed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, was scheduled to come home soon, his mother said.

Lance Cpl. Jordan C. Haerter, 19, of Sag Harbor, N.Y., also died Tuesday, the Defense Department said.

Yale grew up in rural Meherrin, one of those “teeny tiny little Virginia towns where if you sneeze, you miss it,” Rebecca Yale said.

When he was little, Yale loved to hang out with his granddad “in the bush and the thicket,” his grandfather, William Sydnor Sr., said. “I used to call him ‘Wild Man.’ No matter how much he would get scratched up in the woods, he always wanted to go again next time . . . and he was only 5 or 6 then.”

Sydnor said his son, Yale’s father, lived with the boy off and on while he was growing up.

Yale became an “awesome skateboarder” and “one of the top paintball players” in the area, according to his mother. She said he was setting up a Web site for a paintball team he had founded.

Yale and his little sister, Tammy, had signed up to play in a paintball tournament in August, said Rebecca Yale, 38. Because he had missed Tammy’s 16th birthday while serving in Iraq, he made plans to take her to Busch Gardens for a special celebration when he got home.

“They had lots of plans,” his mother said. “John loved his family and his friends.”

Rebecca Yale said her son, who left for Iraq on Oct. 31, was due home in less than a month.
Mother and son were so close that when he got stationed at Camp Lejeune almost two years ago, she and his sister moved to North Carolina from Virginia to be closer to him.

“He wanted his mom and his sister down here with him so he would have some family, so that’s what we did,” Rebecca Yale said yesterday from her home in North Carolina.

A neighbor in Virginia, Kenny Ellis, said Yale was a good son, always “helping his momma.”

“He helped her pay the rent, buy a car,” Ellis said. “They were right close, and he was a good boy.”

Yale graduated from Prince Edward County High School in 2006, his mother said. He was a member of the school robotics and drama clubs. He was a thespian who liked to put on his own plays.

“He could’ve gone to New York to do his own Broadway show,” Rebecca Yale said.

Sydnor said that before shipping out to Iraq, Yale came home to Virginia to say goodbye to friends and family.

“I told him I didn’t want him to go because he was young and he didn’t know what he was getting into,” Sydnor said. “I tried to talk him out of it, but that’s what he wanted. And I’m proud of him for going into the service.”

Staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.