PHOENIX — The U.S. Navy SEAL who was shot and killed by Islamic State militants in Iraq on May 3 is being promoted to the rank of chief petty officer, the Navy said Wednesday.
The announcement of the posthumous promotion for special warfare operator Charles Keating IV comes two days before his funeral in Coronado, Calif.
Lt. Cmdr. Nate Christensen, a Navy spokesman, said that Keating had been eligible to go before a promotion board this year, and that based on his evaluations and assignments, there was good reason to believe he would have been promoted.
While the promotion will not affect pay or benefits, Keating, a grandson of the Phoenix savings-and-loan financier with the same name, will be able to be buried wearing his new rank.
The Navy confirmed Friday that Keating had privately married Brooke Clark before his deployment.
"Yes, according to his military records, he was married before he deployed," Navy spokeswoman Lt. Beth Teach said Friday, confirming his wife as Clark.
Keating, 31, was publicly engaged to Clark, 29, and the couple were planning a ceremony in November after he returned from Iraq.
It is common for service members to marry before deployment to secure benefits and protections for their loved one.
It would have been up to Keating to allocate survivor benefits to Clark, although he could have named other beneficiaries, Teach said.
The marriage was "a well-guarded secret," friend Robert Whitley told People magazine. Whitley is a wine critic in the San Diego area and judges at wine competitions, where he met Clark, who has been a judge's concierge.
"I can't speak to the chemistry that existed between them, nor would I want to invade Brooke's privacy even if I had any special insight, but the one thing I do know is that they adored each other," Whitley told The Republic by email.
They dated for a year and a half or two years before his death, according to Eli Crane, a former SEAL and longtime friend whom Keating had listed as one of three people to identify his family in the case of his death.
According to the Pentagon, Keating was part of a quick reaction force that moved in to rescue U.S. military advisers from an Islamic State attack.
Keating and other special operations forces went to the rescue of U.S. forces caught in a gun battle involving more than 100 Islamic State fighters. The small team of American advisers had gone to Teleskof, about 14 miles north of Mosul, to meet with Kurdish peshmerga forces.
The attack triggered a massive coalition air response that destroyed equipment, buildings and killed up to 60 militants.
Keating is the third American to die in combat in Iraq since the U.S. military deployed advisers and other personnel there in 2014 to support the war against the Islamic State:
- Marine Staff Sgt. Louis F. Cardin, 27, of Temecula, Calif., was killed March 19 in a rocket attack on an Iraqi base.
- Master Sgt. Joshua Wheeler, 39, a Special Forces soldier from Roland, Okla., was killed Oct. 22 in a raid that freed 70 Islamic State hostages from a makeshift prison in northern Iraq.
According to Christensen, 12 sailors have been posthumously promoted so far this year.
Keating will be buried Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego. A public procession to honor him will take place Friday in Coronado, where Keating's SEAL Team 1 is based.
Contributing: Kaila White, The Arizona Republic. Follow The Arizona Republic on Twitter: @azcentral
