2 Illinois guardsmen killed in Afghanistan

SPRINGFIELD -- One of the two members of the Illinois Army National Guard killed this week in Afghanistan has been promoted posthumously, officials said Thursday.

Spc. Schuyler Patch, 25, was killed alongside Sgt. Scott Stream, 39, when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb in Kandahar, Afghanistan, on Tuesday.

Patch, of Galva in northwestern Illinois, has been promoted to sergeant, said Guard spokesman Maj. Brad Leighton. Patch was on his second deployment.

The two men were assisting Afghan National Security Forces on patrol when the bomb exploded. Two other military members and one Afghan civilian were killed, officials said.

Stream, of east central Mattoon, was on his third deployment. He enlisted with the Illinois Guard in 2000 and was assigned to the 130th Infantry, based in Effingham. He left behind a wife, Rasa Stream, and two children.

"Words cannot describe how our family is feeling after the loss of our hero," Rasa Stream said in a statement issued by the Guard. "He was an amazing father, husband and son who made ultimate sacrifice for the country he loved."

Patch graduated from Wethersfield High School in Kewanee in 2002 and the same year served seven months in Iraq. He was deployed to Afghanistan in December as part of the Illinois National Guard's largest troop deployment since World War II.

Stream and Patch are the state's 22nd and 23rd casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Information on funeral arrangements was not immediately available.