By NALINEE SEELAL Sunday, April 6 2008

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FALLEN TRINI SOLDIER: Sgt Dayne Dhanoolal and his wife Kynesha in happier times....

Sergeant Dayne Dhanoolal the Trinidadian soldier who was killed in Iraq, when a bomb ripped through the vehicle he was travelling in on March 31, was looking forward to returning to Trinidad later this year to enjoy his grandmother’s sada roti and tomato choka which were his favourite meals.

Dhanoolal’s grandmother Sita was close to tears yesterday at her Maracas Valley home while reminiscing about the times she spent with her 26-year-old grandson.

She is still unable to come to terms with his death.

According to Sita, Dhanoolal left Trinidad for the US in 1987, and he spoke to her a few times.

“He was such a sweet child, always smiling, and in the company of a lot of friends at Acono Road,” she said.

The ailing grandmother who is afflicted with diabetes and high blood pressure said that while growing up, Dhanoolal spent a lot of time at her home and demanded his favourite meal of sada roti and tomato choka a few times per week.

“He would say to me, mama, I want plata roti, which was the name he coined for sada and tomato choka, and I never turned down his request,” she said.

She said relatives refused to tell her that Dayne or “No rain” as she fondly called him had died.

“I only found out on Thursday, that my grandchild died, and I have not had a good night’s rest since,” said Sita.

She said her son Sylvan left for the United States yesterday to attend the funeral.

Dhanoolal’s other sister Natalie lives in the United States.

Dhanoolal was staying in Brooklyn before being posted in Iraq. He was just three weeks shy of returning home to the wife he’d barely seen since their marriage when he volunteered for a dangerous mission in a Baghdad hot zone.

The soldier, admired by his men for his courage, wanted to be with them in case anything bad happened. It did.

A roadside bomb ripped through the Bradley M3 he was riding in last Monday and killed him.

Later that day, Dhanoolal’s wife Kynesha, 28, checked her e-mail and read the last message he would ever send. “He told me, Kynesha, I’m okay, I’ve just been real busy. He said, ‘I love you.’ It was the last thing he said. Then three hours later, he died,” she said.

“He was the greatest person I ever met,” Kynesha said emotionally.

“To know him was to love him. He didn’t have an enemy in the world. He was simply the light of my life.”

Dhanoolal, she said, emigrated from Trinidad with his mother when he was 15 and settled in Brooklyn, where he went to school and played soccer and enjoyed his Xbox.

He joined the Army and was a combat engineer with the 3rd Brigade, stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia, when he met Kynesha in April 2006.