Frankfurt Shooting: Friends, Family Remember Slain Airmen

March 4, 2011 -- As details emerged today in the deadly assault on U.S. servicemen at an airport in Frankfurt, Germany, friends and family of the fallen spoke out about the slain airmen.

U.S. Air Force servicemen Zachary Cuddeback, 21, and Nicholas J. Alden, 25, were killed when the suspected gunman, 21-year-old Arid Uka from Kosovo, opened fire in a bus at the airport. German prosecutor Rainer Griesbaum told reporters today that Uka asked Alden if the troops were heading to Afghanistan while he was standing outside the bus. When he said yes, Uka allegedly pulled out a handgun and shot Alden in the head before entering the bus and shooting Cuddeback in the head.

The gunman's weapon jammed after he wounded two more servicemen and, when he tried to flee, he was chased down and subdued by the other servicemen who were apparently the target of the attack, Griesbaum said.

Cuddeback, the bus driver, had never feared for his safety in Germany, his best friend told ABC News.

"Zach enjoyed his life and he was proud to be fighting for his country," said Erin Jones, who met Cuddeback when they were 12-years-old.

Jones said the last time they spoke, on Monday, the two were planning Jones' twenty-first birthday party. "I didn't know it was going to be the last time I spoke with him or I would have told him that I loved him," Jones said.

In a statement, Cuddeback's parents called him an "Army brat" whose "love for the Air Force, cars and hockey were paramount in his life."

Cuddeback's uncle and godfather, Dan Cuddeback, told ABC News Cuddeback was one of the youngest in a long line of Cuddebacks who served the nation, from Zachary Cuddeback's great-grandfather in the Second World War to his cousin who is currently serving in the Army.

Cuddeback, from Stanardsville, Virginia, was in the 86th Vehicle Readiness Squadron at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany. There, he was "always joking about something, but ready always willing to help out and be there for whatever was needed," one fellow serviceman at Ramstein said.

Alden, who was stationed with the military police at the 48th Security Forces Squadron at the Royal Air Force base in Lakenheath, England, was heading to Afghanistan with his fellow airmen before the attack.

Though he was from Indiana, Alden, 25, lived in South Carolina, where he met his wife. The couple recently had their second child, according to a report by ABC News' Indianapolis affiliate WRTV.

"The thing that I'm going to miss the most is being able to talk to him, being able to see him. It hurts even worse because he's got two children and they won't get to fully know him and what a great person he was," Nicholas Alden's brother, Joe, told WRTV.

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