BALTIMORE -- The Pentagon said a soldier who was born in Boston and grew up in Plymouth has been killed in Afghanistan.

Staff Sgt. Matthew A. Pucino, 34, of Cockeysville, Md., died Monday in Pashay Kala, Afghanistan, when his mounted patrol unit was attacked with an IED.

Pucino was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 20th Special Forces Group of the Maryland Army National Guard in Glen Arm.

Pucino is the 11th Maryland Army National Guardsman to die in the war on terror.

Pucino was deployed to Afghanistan in July 2009. He had also served in Iraq.

Pucino attended Bishop Stang High School in Dartmouth from 1989 to 1993 and enlisted in the U.S. Army in 2002. He earned a Green Beret as a Special Forces engineer sergeant.

His family lived in Plymouth, Mass., in the 1980s. Pucino also lived in Wareham and Bourne before entering the Army.

His cousin, Anthony Pucino, of Seekonk, Mass., said Pucino joined the service after the Sept. 11 attacks.

"It wasn't for revenge, it was because he thought it was what he needed to do," Pucino told the Patriot Ledger.

"The last time I talked to him, he said if he had to do it all over again, he would. He died doing what he loved --- fighting for his country," he said.

His death comes two weeks after Plymouth South High graduate and Army Spc. Benjamin Sherman died in Afghanistan while trying to rescue a fellow soldier from a river.

Survivors include his wife Crystal of Clarksville, Tenn.; parents Albert and Kathryn Pucino of Orlando, Fla., and a sister, Lisa Haglof of Sagamore, Mass.