News broke late Tuesday that Air Force Major Adrianna Vorderbruggen, 36, a recent transplant to the San Francisco Bay Area, had become the first openly gay US military servicewoman to be killed in combat, while on a patrol mission in Afghanistan. She and five other U.S. troops were killed when a suicide bomber rammed a motorcycle packed with explosives into their joint NATO-Afghan patrol on Monday in outside Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, as the Daily Beast first reported.

The Taliban has claimed credit for the attack, which occurred just north of Kabul. It's the deadliest to occur in the country since August.

Vorderbruggen was active in getting the military to finally repeal the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in 2011, and her wife Heather Lamb, whom she married in 2012 and who relocated to her mother's home in San Rafael with the couple's four-year-old son according to ABC 7, flew to Dover Air Force Base today in Delaware to receive her wife's flag-draped casket, which would not have been possible before the repeal.

GayStarNews notes that Vorderbruggen is believed to be the first openly gay person in the Air Force to die in combat.

NBC Bay Area relays a statement from Lamb, who is a former servicewoman herself. "Adrianna was the light of our lives. Our son, Jacob, and I miss her so much. She has always been my hero. Never more than now."

As Servicemembers, Partners, and Allies for Respect and Tolerance for All (SPARTA) told the Daily Beast, "Many LGBT troops have given their lives in service to our country. Thanks to the repeal of DADT, their families will be honored instead of hiding in the shadows." They add, "This is a tragedy for any family, and that’s why it is so important that we as nation embrace their loved ones and that we remember them for who they really were."

Vorderbruggen is originally from Minnesota and had recently been living with Lamb and her son in the DC area, prior to her most recent deployment. It's unclear how long they had called San Rafael home, and Reuters and others still placed their residence near DC. The above photo apparently taken at Cavallo Point in Marin County and posted to Facebook has been widely circulated, showing the couple and their son.

A relative who spoke to the SF Chronicle described Vorderbruggen as "lighthearted and goofy."

Retired Navy Commander Zoe Dunning remembered her friend Vorderbruggen as a "fighter," and said to NBC News, "Her death in some ways signifies women, gays and lesbians are truly equal. We do have the same risk out there."

Vorderbruggen also becomes the third U.S. servicewoman to be killed in combat in Afghanistan after two died in a helicopter accident in October.