Photograph courtesy of U.S. Marines
Woodall, Peter
(July 1, 1981 - April 27, 2007)
One of the questions left in the aftermath of the Iraq war just might be the name of a fallen hero. He was born Piotr Wloka in Poland and buried in the Arlington National Cemetery under the name of Peter Woodall. His family moved to Chicago when he was eight years old and to Sarasota, Florida, when he was around thirteen. He went to Riverview High School in Sarasota and shortly after graduation he joined the Marine Corps on June 19, 2000. He was an infantryman in Iraq in his first tour of duty. When he was wounded by shrapnel, he returned to the United States.
After his marriage in Nevada on September 2, 2002, to Joanna Magadelena Klimczyk, who came from Poland, he changed his name from Piotr Wloka to Peter Woodall to have the same last name as his mother, Elizabeth, who divorced Cezary Wloka and married Richard T. Woodall. His nickname, Vodka, stuck. Joanna and Peter selected Jakub, a popular boys' name in Poland, for their first child.
After his first tour of duty, the decorated Marine thought of joining the Florida Highway Patrol. When he told his younger sister, Army Specialist Katarzyna Wloka, that he was going back to Iraq for his second tour of duty, she left Iraq, where she saw many casualties suffer and die in clinics, and received another post. Peter, or Piotr as she called him, was assigned to the 8th Engineer Support Battalion stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. He was promoted to the rank of sergeant December 1, 2004, and went back to Iraq in January of 2007, with the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force. He was killed April 27, 2007, while trying to defuse a roadside bomb in the Anbar province of Iraq.
From: Edward Pinkowski (2008)