Three to five militants were firing from higher up, with the sun to their backs.

Spc. Wesley Wells, 21, manning an observation post a couple of hundred feet up a ridge, raced to the platoon's Humvees to grab a machine gun. He never made it.

Fellow Wolfhounds said Wells, a married soldier from Libertyville, Ill., received multiple gunshot wounds in the firefight.

"He was a great soldier," A Company commander Capt. Tommy Cardone said from Afghanistan yesterday. "He was just one of those kids that everyone laughed with, and when they wanted to do something, they got Wells. He was one of the more liked kids overall in the company."

As Schofield soldiers prepared a memorial yesterday for Wells at their base at Orgun-E near the Pakistan border in southeastern Afghanistan, his family thousands of miles away in America's heartland was dealing with their own grief.

Wells was the fourth Schofield Barracks soldier to be killed in Afghanistan, and the first Wolfhound to be lost.

At his base, the infantryman's rifle would have been positioned bayonet down, his helmet on the butt of the rifle, his desert boots side by side neatly below, a picture of the soldier nearby for soldiers to reflect on, touch, and say a prayer.

A private prayer service is being held today at the Schofield Barracks chapel.

"It sucks he gave his life up, but that's what we're all prepared here to do," Cardone said. "Soldiers really know what they are doing, and why they are doing it, and I wish we didn't lose him, but if he was here and somebody else got killed, he'd be the first guy ready to go out on the next mission."

In the town in Illinois where Wells' mother lives, Cub Scouts lined the street with more than 100 American flags.

His family is making funeral arrangements, and is expecting to receive his body tomorrow. His wife, Jonalyn, was flying in from Hawai'i.

Kevin Kristan, a second cousin to Wells, said the young soldier's parents are devastated.

"She was scared. She knew there was the possibility of him getting hurt," Kristan said. "Just like any mother, they are petrified for their children when it's dealing with guns and real-life bad guys."

"It's a tragedy," he added. "When a young person gets killed that way, you question whether the war is worth it or not when something like that hits at home."

Sgt. James Lopez, 24, Wells' squad leader, doesn't examine the importance of being in Afghanistan for himself or the fallen Wolfhound in terms of issues like providing a safer environment for historic presidential elections coming up Oct. 9.

"I'll tell you the cause — he came over here for his family," Lopez said. "He came over here for his friends, and he came over here for the people of the United States, that was his cause, and he died for those people."

Wells' mother, Joan Wells, works at the Grayslake branch office of the Lake County Circuit Court in northeastern Illinois. Wesley Wells' two older sisters, Heather and Tiffany Wells, live in the town.

Students at Libertyville High School, where Wells last attended classes in 1997, honored the fallen soldier with a moment of silence yesterday morning, a school official said.

Jim Hayner, village administrator for Gurnee, Ill., and a cousin of Wells' mother, described him as a "typical teenage kid."

"He was very fun loving and always had a smile on his face," Hayner said. "He was not on any athletic teams, but he liked to go biking."

"He was just very close to his mother and two sisters, and they are taking his death very, very hard," Hayner said.

He said Wells dropped out of Libertyville High but later earned a GED certificate.

"He was a high school dropout without much focus until he had another cousin take him in and get him pointed in the right direction," Hayner added.

"We all watched that kid go from being kind of a misdirected boy to being a fine young man in less than six months after he joined the Army."

Wells entered the Army in May 2002. He was assigned to the 2-27 Wolfhounds five months later.

Family members yesterday declined to discuss Wells' death, but issued a brief statement.

"We all knew that it was a very dangerous place, and we all prayed for his safe return, but this was not to be," they said. "Wesley paid the ultimate price while serving his country."

In Afghanistan, A Company had been at Shkin on the Pakistan border before being moved to Orgun-E, a former Soviet air base.

Wells' death about a 1›-hour drive north from Orgun-E in Naka came amid a flurry of attacks on American troops across the south and east of the country, where Taliban-led insurgents are most active.

No other soldiers were wounded in Monday's 10-minute attack north of Orgun-E, and it was difficult to tell if any militants had been killed, although when soldiers returned the next day, black flags were found, indicating fighters had died.

Cardone said his soldiers have been in five direct firefights since the company arrived in Afghanistan six months ago. With elections approaching, things may heat up a little bit, he said.

"Overall, security ought to be pretty good over here," he said. "Coalition forces, Afghan forces are everywhere."

One of his soldiers was wounded last month in the leg and hand "during a pretty substantial fight."

"It (Wells' death) is affecting everyone in the way that it's awful what happened," Lopez said. "But we need to get on with our job."