US Army Sergeant Jeremy Hardison killed by suicide bomber

23-year-old US Army Sergeant Jeremy F. Hardison, from Maysville, North Carolina, was one of three North Carolina National Guard personnel killed on 1st October 2012 by a suicide bomber. 

A Taliban insurgent drove a motorcycle packed with explosives into a group of soldiers who were on a patrol in Khost, eastern Afghanistan. 

Sergeant Hardison served with the 514th Military Police Company, 60th Troop Command, Winterville, North Carolina. 

He joined the National Guard so that he could attend school and then design and build aircraft, his family said in a statement. He was a driver for a Greensboro trucking company before the 514th left North Carolina for training at Fort Bliss, Texas, in June. The unit departed for Afghanistan in early August. He attended White Oak High School in Jacksonville, played the trombone, and taught himself to play guitar. His wife, Brittni, said she remembers him as a "kind and respectful husband" who loved his stepdaughter Alyssa. 

The other soldiers killed were: Sergeant Donna Johnson and Sergeant Thomas Butler.