2 years after soldier's death, widow has his son

AUSTIN, United States (AFP) - Fifteen-month-old Benton is the spitting image of his father, a US soldier who died in Iraq two years before his son was born.

Kathleen Smith and her son Brian in Austin,Texas

"He looks so much like his father, it's kind of scary," his mother Kathleen Smith told AFP, as she talked about her unusual decision to have her soldier-husband's baby posthumously, using semen frozen before he was deployed.

"Benton is the child Brian and I could have had. I have part of what Brian and I could have had -- part of my dream was possible even after he died," Smith, 42, said. "My husband and I had talked about the probability of needing to do in vitro fertilization because I already had a fertility issue. That's why he went to a sperm bank before he went to Iraq."

Smith is not the only US soldier to have semen frozen and held at a sperm bank before deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan.

Many have done so not because they fear they will be killed but because of the risk they would be injured or exposed to chemicals during deployment which could affect their fertility. "There was a slight increase in military storage in 2003," said Tanya Peebles, spokeswoman for Cryobank, one of the biggest sperm banks in California.

Storage of sperm usually costs 365 dollars a year. But Cryobank ran a special offer that year, with "semen collection and storage services at a substantially reduced cost, with the first year storage provided free of charge" to military personnel who were about to be deployed to Iraq.