The 22-year-old Army specialist from the San Francisco Bay Area city of Walnut Creek was killed April 4, 2007 while on patrol in Balad, north of Baghdad. The Department of Defense initially listed his cause of death as a roadside bomb explosion. But a colonel in Coon’s unit called the family from Iraq to explain that their son had been shot in the head. Coon was nominated for a Bronze Star but couldn't understand the honor, his father said. "He said, ‘Dad, they're calling me a hero, but all I did was what I thought was right’. Jim Coon said he kept in regular touch with his son through e-mails, which the young soldier used to express his growing frustration with the war effort. In a subsequent e-mail to his family, Coon wrote “I wanna come home so bad. I don't wanna play Army anymore.”