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Troops search for 7 dead friends
BY DIONNE SEARCEY
STAFF CORRESPONDENT
January 7, 2005, 2:24 PM EST
TAJI, Iraq -- Soldiers stood at the edge of a reed-lined canal Friday and watched as the vestiges of seven friends were plucked from the murky green water.
A muddy combat boot, a black clip for night vision goggles, a bone fragment. It was a gruesome task that began Thursday night after a giant roadside bomb tore apart an armored Bradley Fighting Vehicle, setting it on fire and flipping it into the shallow canal. The seven soldiers inside -- one from New York and six from Louisiana -- died instantly, said Lt. Col. Geoffrey Slack of Mastic Beach.
And thank God for that, he repeated several times as he helped members of Manhattan's 69th Infantry Regiment comb the canal and a nearby field, finding an empty helmet and a part of the curved handle of a 9 mm pistol.
The blast put a waist-deep hole in the dirt road the Bradley had rumbled down as part of a small convoy. The explosion tore out the floor of the vehicle and blew off its hatch. It triggered the heavy ammunition stored inside, setting off rounds that were still popping as fire trucks arrived. When the Bradley landed, it carved out a large pool in a parallel canal.
Friday morning the air still smelled like gasoline. The vehicle had been removed but its leaked fuel made little rainbows on the pool's surface where oil floated in perfect black polka dots. Beneath the water was a fire extinguisher and a desert camouflage pillow that soldiers like to use to soften the bumpy ride in their Bradleys.
The troops took their turns as morbid fishermen, throwing lines with claw-like hooks tied to the end into the canal to snag the items. The mud started to swallow a couple of the men who had to be pulled to safety by comrades.
The soldiers in the National Guard unit made three piles: one for vehicle parts, one for top-secret equipment and one for the victims' personal items. It was up to Spc. Brian Burns, 24, a medic, to collect the human remains. Wearing rubber gloves, he sighed as he gently placed them in a green waterproof bag designed for protecting his rucksack. A close friend was among the dead. Newsday is not identifying the soldier at the request of the U.S. military, which is still contacting family members.
"People are dying here and sometimes I think I could be sitting at home with my family, cooking in a restaurant in a safe place," said Burns, of upstate New York, as he paused from his work.
Back home near Newburg, Burns is a chef. Besides cooking, he loves hunting and hiking and rock climbing and thought that joining the National Guard would give him a chance to improve his skills as an outdoorsman, he said, holding the green bag in his left hand.
"I don't regret coming over here. It's a chance to serve my country."
Then the chef went back to the day's grim task, joining the mailman from Huntington, the college student from Queens, the Coney Island policeman and the Manhattan stockbroker who sifted through the tall, dry reeds and walked the fields on both sides of the canal, finding charred vehicle parts as far as 50 yards away. Shiny chunks of shrapnel were everywhere, and someone lined them up on the hood of a Humvee.
The bomb must have been huge, soldiers said. This mostly rural area lends itself to effective bomb-making, they said, because insurgents can spend time building complicated devices while going unnoticed and can tap the resources of looters who once helped themselves to the abandoned ammunition stockpiles of a nearby Iraqi Republican National Guard camp.
The blast went off close to the intersection of busy Route Redlegs, named after artillerymen who first secured the area in the spring of 2003. Slack, commander of the 69th Mechanized Infantry unit, said he typically forbids soldiers from traveling that route because of the bombs that often explode there. The convoy on Thursday needed only to cross the road as part of its patrol of tiny Awad al-Hussein north of Baghdad, but they didn't make it.
Slack, who runs a tree-cutting business on Long Island, handed a soldier his rifle Friday, dropped to his knees along a muddy embankment and dug in the ground with a small shovel. He didn't want the enemy to find anything they could use for trophies. He and other soldiers pulled from the loose soil part of an ammunition belt and a pair of handcuffs.
"We train for close combat," said Slack, who has been on duty with the Guard since the World Trade Center attacks. "This is unlike anything we've trained for. This is like murder."
For Slack, the loss of so many soldiers is particularly painful because three other members under his command have been killed since the unit deployed in October. In November, Sgt. Christian Engeldrum, 39, a New York City firefighter from the Bronx, and Army Spc. Wilfredo Urbina, 29, a volunteer firefighter from Baldwin, died when a car bomb exploded near their Humvee in Baghdad. Only days later Staff Sgt. Henry Irizarry of the Bronx was killed in another car bomb incident.
The Louisiana soldiers who died Thursday, part of the 2nd Battalion, 156th Infantry Brigade, were folded into Slack's unit for their mission in Iraq. The two groups live and fight alongside each other here, and the New Yorkers said they consider their Louisiana counterparts to be family.
"I can't replace any one of them," said Capt. Michael Kazmierzak, 34, of New Orleans, who leads a company of the Louisiana soldiers. "Most of them are very close to each other and have known each other their whole lives."
One of the men fanning out across a field Friday with trash bags was Sgt. Jose Melecio, 26, who said he was watching a movie the night before when a soldier came in and told him seven of his friends had died.
"I didn't believe it," said Melecio. Just several months ago, he was a student at Bronx Community College. "We had a normal life," he said, "'til we came out here."
Dionne Searcey is embedded with the 69th Infantry Regiment and is reporting under restricted conditions
The one guy from New York that was killed was one of my best friends in High School. I still can't believe it's him. I was hysterical crying this morning when I found out, but I still can't believe it's him. I don't want to believe that he was one of the seven soldiers that died. I dunno what to do. I just don't know. Now another one of my friends is getting sent out. I dunno, man I dunno.
BY DIONNE SEARCEY
STAFF CORRESPONDENT
January 7, 2005, 2:24 PM EST
TAJI, Iraq -- Soldiers stood at the edge of a reed-lined canal Friday and watched as the vestiges of seven friends were plucked from the murky green water.
A muddy combat boot, a black clip for night vision goggles, a bone fragment. It was a gruesome task that began Thursday night after a giant roadside bomb tore apart an armored Bradley Fighting Vehicle, setting it on fire and flipping it into the shallow canal. The seven soldiers inside -- one from New York and six from Louisiana -- died instantly, said Lt. Col. Geoffrey Slack of Mastic Beach.
And thank God for that, he repeated several times as he helped members of Manhattan's 69th Infantry Regiment comb the canal and a nearby field, finding an empty helmet and a part of the curved handle of a 9 mm pistol.
The blast put a waist-deep hole in the dirt road the Bradley had rumbled down as part of a small convoy. The explosion tore out the floor of the vehicle and blew off its hatch. It triggered the heavy ammunition stored inside, setting off rounds that were still popping as fire trucks arrived. When the Bradley landed, it carved out a large pool in a parallel canal.
Friday morning the air still smelled like gasoline. The vehicle had been removed but its leaked fuel made little rainbows on the pool's surface where oil floated in perfect black polka dots. Beneath the water was a fire extinguisher and a desert camouflage pillow that soldiers like to use to soften the bumpy ride in their Bradleys.
The troops took their turns as morbid fishermen, throwing lines with claw-like hooks tied to the end into the canal to snag the items. The mud started to swallow a couple of the men who had to be pulled to safety by comrades.
The soldiers in the National Guard unit made three piles: one for vehicle parts, one for top-secret equipment and one for the victims' personal items. It was up to Spc. Brian Burns, 24, a medic, to collect the human remains. Wearing rubber gloves, he sighed as he gently placed them in a green waterproof bag designed for protecting his rucksack. A close friend was among the dead. Newsday is not identifying the soldier at the request of the U.S. military, which is still contacting family members.
"People are dying here and sometimes I think I could be sitting at home with my family, cooking in a restaurant in a safe place," said Burns, of upstate New York, as he paused from his work.
Back home near Newburg, Burns is a chef. Besides cooking, he loves hunting and hiking and rock climbing and thought that joining the National Guard would give him a chance to improve his skills as an outdoorsman, he said, holding the green bag in his left hand.
"I don't regret coming over here. It's a chance to serve my country."
Then the chef went back to the day's grim task, joining the mailman from Huntington, the college student from Queens, the Coney Island policeman and the Manhattan stockbroker who sifted through the tall, dry reeds and walked the fields on both sides of the canal, finding charred vehicle parts as far as 50 yards away. Shiny chunks of shrapnel were everywhere, and someone lined them up on the hood of a Humvee.
The bomb must have been huge, soldiers said. This mostly rural area lends itself to effective bomb-making, they said, because insurgents can spend time building complicated devices while going unnoticed and can tap the resources of looters who once helped themselves to the abandoned ammunition stockpiles of a nearby Iraqi Republican National Guard camp.
The blast went off close to the intersection of busy Route Redlegs, named after artillerymen who first secured the area in the spring of 2003. Slack, commander of the 69th Mechanized Infantry unit, said he typically forbids soldiers from traveling that route because of the bombs that often explode there. The convoy on Thursday needed only to cross the road as part of its patrol of tiny Awad al-Hussein north of Baghdad, but they didn't make it.
Slack, who runs a tree-cutting business on Long Island, handed a soldier his rifle Friday, dropped to his knees along a muddy embankment and dug in the ground with a small shovel. He didn't want the enemy to find anything they could use for trophies. He and other soldiers pulled from the loose soil part of an ammunition belt and a pair of handcuffs.
"We train for close combat," said Slack, who has been on duty with the Guard since the World Trade Center attacks. "This is unlike anything we've trained for. This is like murder."
For Slack, the loss of so many soldiers is particularly painful because three other members under his command have been killed since the unit deployed in October. In November, Sgt. Christian Engeldrum, 39, a New York City firefighter from the Bronx, and Army Spc. Wilfredo Urbina, 29, a volunteer firefighter from Baldwin, died when a car bomb exploded near their Humvee in Baghdad. Only days later Staff Sgt. Henry Irizarry of the Bronx was killed in another car bomb incident.
The Louisiana soldiers who died Thursday, part of the 2nd Battalion, 156th Infantry Brigade, were folded into Slack's unit for their mission in Iraq. The two groups live and fight alongside each other here, and the New Yorkers said they consider their Louisiana counterparts to be family.
"I can't replace any one of them," said Capt. Michael Kazmierzak, 34, of New Orleans, who leads a company of the Louisiana soldiers. "Most of them are very close to each other and have known each other their whole lives."
One of the men fanning out across a field Friday with trash bags was Sgt. Jose Melecio, 26, who said he was watching a movie the night before when a soldier came in and told him seven of his friends had died.
"I didn't believe it," said Melecio. Just several months ago, he was a student at Bronx Community College. "We had a normal life," he said, "'til we came out here."
Dionne Searcey is embedded with the 69th Infantry Regiment and is reporting under restricted conditions
The one guy from New York that was killed was one of my best friends in High School. I still can't believe it's him. I was hysterical crying this morning when I found out, but I still can't believe it's him. I don't want to believe that he was one of the seven soldiers that died. I dunno what to do. I just don't know. Now another one of my friends is getting sent out. I dunno, man I dunno.