WEATHERFORD —
The body of fallen Navy corpsman Clayton R. Beauchamp was escorted home Wednesday morning from the joint reserve base in Fort Worth to Weatherford as area residents lined the streets in his honor.
Petty Officer 3rd Class Beauchamp was killed Aug. 7 in Afghanistan during an improvised explosive device attack on the Marine unit he was attached to as they conducted a foot patrol.
Hundreds stood along the roadways from the Naval Air Station Fort Worth Joint Reserve Base to Weatherford, as firefighters, police officers, military and several motorcycle groups, such as the Patriot Guard riders, escorted the white hearse.
As the procession passed through Weatherford, veterans saluted along the route, children held homemade posters and many people waved flags to honor the Weatherford resident killed in action.
“I can tell you that Clayton absolutely had no regrets,” his father, Jack Beauchamp said last week. “He believed in what he was doing and what he did. We take comfort in that he was doing exactly what he wanted to do.”
Beauchamp, a 2009 Weatherford High School graduate, signed up with the Navy while still in high school. He was on his first deployment, which began earlier this summer, according to his aunt, Susan Brook.
Beauchamp was assigned as a medic to the 1st Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment out of Camp Pendleton, Calif., when he was killed in the Shaban District of Helmand Province, Afghanistan.
Beauchamp left behind a fiancee, a sister and three brothers, as well as his father and mother.
The viewing for Beauchamp will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday at White’s Funeral Home and a service is scheduled for 2 p.m. Saturday at North Side Baptist Church with the burial immediately after at Memory Gardens.
The Clayton Beauchamp Memorial Fund has been set up at Legacy Texas Bank to help start a scholarship fund, according to the family.
According to his family, Beauchamp was close friends with Weatherford’s Austin Staggs, who was also killed in action in Afghanistan in November 2010. The families are starting separate scholarship funds to honor the young men killed in action.
To view photos of the reception residents of Parker County gave Beauchamp, click the photos below, and find more photos at weatherforddemocrat.smugmug.com.
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