The first thing Lt. Col. Scott Vaughan noticed about Ashton Goodman was that she was pleasant and quick to smile.

But as he watched her in action, he soon realized her competence, her ambition: She’d been in the U.S. Air Force fewer than three years and already had served in Iraq and Afghanistan, each time voluntarily.

She was promoted three times, to senior airman, and was soon to be made a noncommissioned officer. She recently broadened her skills by learning to write news stories for the Air Force’s Web site.

“A remarkable legacy,” said Vaughan, who was Goodman’s squadron commander in Afghanistan and her eulogist in Indianapolis on Tuesday.

Goodman, 21, a 2006 Warren Central High School graduate, was killed last week in Afghanistan when a roadside bomb detonated under the Humvee she was driving. Her passenger, Lt. Col. Mark E. Stratton II, a member of the Pentagon Joint Staff, also was killed.

Homemade bombs hidden along roads, called improvised explosive devices, are the insurgents’ chief weapon against American troops.

Goodman’s death comes amid rising violence in Afghanistan. On Monday, four American troops were killed in I.E.D. incidents, and one soldier died Tuesday in an insurgent attack.

Goodman was buried Tuesday in an Eastside cemetery. About 100 mourners stood around her flag-draped casket during a graveside service under the hot sun.

She was the first woman from Indiana to die from combat wounds in either Iraq or Afghanistan (two others died in noncombat incidents), and one of 134 servicemen or servicewomen with Indiana ties killed in those conflicts.

Vaughan described Goodman as multifaceted.

“She wasn’t afraid to roll up her sleeves and change a tire on a gun truck,” he said, “and she also was one of the airmen selected to brief Admiral Mullen.” Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had been in Afghanistan recently.

Goodman’s primary job was providing security to supply convoys. She traveled thousands of miles in Iraq and Afghanistan.

At the time of her death, she was assigned to the Panjshir Provincial Reconstruction Team, which rebuilds roads and schools.

She mentored Afghan women during weekly meetings with Panjshir’s director of women’s affairs. Three weeks ago, she led a mission to deliver food and household supplies to one of the province’s poorest regions.

She was killed while driving from Bagram Air Field to a nearby forward operating base.

Her funeral lasted about a half-hour, and at its conclusions the funeral director released a couple dozen butterflies. They flitted about and disappeared.