LEXINGTON, Ky. — After his first few months in Iraq, Bill McMillan's mother, a military wife herself, asked him if the U.S. military should be there.

He told her pulling out now would be wrong, she said Wednesday, a day after he was killed when a homemade bomb hit his vehicle. Five other soldiers were injured in the blast.

Spc. William McMillan III, a 22-year-old Army medic based Schofield Barracks, told his mother, Marge McMillan, he saw good things happening in Iraq, that he went out into the communities and was able to help people suffering from illnesses.

"He was a good medic," she said in a telephone interview from her home in Lexington, where McMillan's wife has been living since he left for Iraq in December. "He got lots of compliments on the stuff that he did."

Indeed, a two-star general recently pinned the Bronze Star on him, Marge McMillan said.

His family, including his father, Capt. William McMillan Jr., a West Point graduate who served in Vietnam, hadn't had time to get all the details of what led to the medal during his first tour of Iraq. "I know he had saved some lives," his mother said.

"We had told him, 'One Bronze Star is enough, start ducking,' " she recalled from a telephone conversation.

She says her son was a standout athlete at Hargrave Military Academy in Virginia, where he was captain of the football, wrestling and lacrosse teams. He attended Virginia Military Institute for a year, then enlisted.

"He must have really gotten hit hard," Marge McMillan said. "He was a really strong kid."

McMillan was due home on leave in September. His wife, Elizabeth, a student at the University of Kentucky, said she talked to her husband just hours before he was killed. His mother talked to him the day before.

Marge McMillan said her son — who is also survived by a sister, Lauren, and a brother, Brad — always managed to get to the phones. His family talked to him two or three times a week.

Elizabeth McMillan said she had been looking forward to talking to her husband on Wednesday, the 18-month anniversary of their wedding.

Of their last conversation, she said, "He was happy and himself. They were switching him from night shift to day shift patrol, and he was on day patrol when this incident occurred. About 12 hours later he died. The last thing he told me was he loved me. I'll always have that."