SIXTY-SEVEN
Almost from its inception, the American military had nurtured the myth that it would leave none of its wounded, dead, or missing behind on the battlefield. That was the ideal. Hard reality, however, did not always follow the myth. More than 78,000 GIs remained MIA from World War II, their bodies long gone and decomposed in the jungles of Borneo or on the battlefields of France and Germany. Korea added another 8,100 missing in the Frozen Chosin, along the Yalu, or in the hills near the DMZ where some of the most savage fighting occurred. Nearly 1,800 more had never been recovered from the tropical forests of Vietnam.
Compared to such staggering numbers, the five missing in Iraq, including the pilot from 1991’s Desert Storm, appeared paltry indeed. However, the impact of numbers meant nothing when one of the MIAs was your best buddy, your platoon or squad member with whom you had shared everything for months, down to your last pair of clean socks. The prospect of going home was proving bittersweet for the Joes of Delta Company 4/31st. Unfortunately, real war was not like a movie in which a dramatic rescue at the end resolved everything and wrapped it up neatly. Real life was messy, inconclusive, and often heartbreaking.
Days and nights in the patrol bases were dull, long, and gloomy. It took a long time for a small, tightly knit outfit like Delta to recover from the losses it suffered in the S-curves. The raucous days of Brenda the Bitch and chasing chickens for a barbecue were long gone. Sometimes twenty-two-year-old Specialist Brandon Gray or twenty-four-year-old Specialist Sammy Rhodes thought their youth was also long gone.
First Platoon’s “old hands” recalled how the roof at Inchon had been Byron Fouty’s favorite place, where he went days to read books or at night to lean on the roof’s lip with his chin in his hands to think. Brandon Gray sometimes wondered what he was thinking, this retiring, gentle kid who had pretty much been on his own from the time he was sixteen until the army took him into its “family.”
In contrast, Alex Jimenez had been big and gregarious, sometimes loud and profane, always ready for a prank in the safety of a battle position or for a fight in the S-curves. He had made CSM Jimenez proud to share the name.
Despite Herculean efforts to rescue the two soldiers, or to recover their bodies, few clues as to their whereabouts had surfaced in the five months since their disappearance. In June, a month after the abductions, a raid on an al-Qaeda safe house near Samarra, more than one hundred miles north of the ambush site, turned up their military ID cards. In October 2007, just as the 2nd BCT was preparing to redeploy to Fort Drum, Coalition Forces recovered a weapon that had been issued to Joe Anzak. Other than that, the search had gone down a black hole, all incoming intelligence about them proving to be little more than red herring. Now, in spite of Lieutenant Colonel’s Infanti’s vow that no soldier would be left behind, in spite of searching up until the last minute, it appeared Fouty and Jimenez would not be going home with the other Polar Bears.
“We are not leaving them behind,” Infanti tried to reassure his men. “One of the things we’re talking to the 101st about is continuing the search for our missing soldiers. We’ve not forgotten them. The search will go on until they’re found.”
The 10th Mountain had relieved the 101st Airborne Division in The Triangle in September 2006. When the 3rd BCT of the 101st returned to reassume control of the AO in November 2007, it found the area much more settled than when it left. Iraqi consurgents manned checkpoints the length of the road; they had proved themselves and now carried AK-47s instead of clubs. Delta Company 4/31st had opened the road to civilian traffic and began issuing driver’s permits to legal vehicle owners. Economic conditions were improving and children who had been required to work went back to school. People waved and smiled from their doorsteps. Thousands of Iraqis were openly aligning themselves with the Coalition; many had applied to join the Iraqi police forces.
Colonel Infanti and Major Mark Manns became comfortable with driving Malibu Road to have dinner or tea with sheikhs and mosque elders. One night, Manns’ host began to laugh. He was a skinny little guy suspected of having been an insurgent for hire. Now he was leader of a group of Concerned Citizens fighting against Jihadists. He pulled up his trouser leg to reveal a nasty scar not quite healed.
“You know,” he said, “your people shot me one time. Now we are friends and together we will rebuild Iraq.”
CSM Alexander Jimenez liked to say that the soldiers of the 10th went into The Triangle of Death and did something people said would never happen—they turned it around.
By the time the “most deployed” division in the U.S. Army redeployed to Fort Drum from its extended 15-month tour, the 2nd BCT had served overseas forty months since December 2001. During that time the 10th Mountain Division had lost 157 soldiers killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan, 52 of them during the current tour, with another 270 wounded.
That task force built around Colonel Infanti’s 4th Battalion in The Triangle conducted over 50 air assaults and three amphibious operations on the Euphrates River. It fired nearly 400 counter-fire artillery missions against enemy forces and in support of troops in contact, killed or wounded 51 enemy fighters, and captured or aided in the capture of some 1,600 insurgents. Members of the battalion won two Silver Stars for gallantry. The battalion was nominated for a Valorous Unit Award.
The battalion also suffered 26 men killed, 109 wounded in action, and 2 whose status had been changed from DUSTWUN to MIA—missing in action. Colonel Infanti’s pocket bulged with casualty cards.
Over fourteen months ago, Sergeant Ronnie Montgomery had stood at the JSB with his counterpart from the 101st Airborne and looked down untamed Malibu Road. “You will never control that road,” the 101st sergeant predicted.
That same sergeant was back again. With a great sense of pride bordering on smugness, Montgomery drove him from JSB past all three Delta Company outposts—without a single incident. The sergeant’s jaw dropped as they completed the uneventful drive.
“We paid a price,” Montgomery said, “but we control the road. We’re giving The Triangle of Death back to you as simply The Triangle.”
EPILOGUE
Balad, Iraq, Dec. 27, 2007 (AMERICAN FORCES PRESS SERVICES)—Iraqi police and U.S. special operations forces seized two suspected extremists believed to be complicit in the kidnapping of three U.S. soldiers in early May, U.S. military officials said today. The suspects were detained during Dec. 24–25 operations in Ramadi, officials said. The raids were prompted by intelligence reports linking the two individuals to the May 12 abduction of three U.S. 10th Mountain Division soldiers after an insurgent ambush near Mahmudiyah in which four U.S. soldiers were killed.
Reports indicate the two detainees are linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq. One of the suspected terrorists is believed to have facilitated the kidnapping and is reported to have used his home to aid in the hiding and transporting of captured soldiers.
The Ramadi raids were part of a series of operations conducted to detain individuals believed complicit in the abduction of the soldiers, officials said . . .
During a previous operation, a weapon belonging to one of the missing soldiers was recovered at a residence of one of the suspects . . .
Both suspects are allegedly involved in terrorist cells responsible for several roadside bomb and mortar attacks against Iraqi and Coalition forces, as well as the kidnapping and murder of Iraqi citizens and members of the Iraqi security forces . . .
Four other individuals seized during the operations are being detained for questioning . . .
Baghdad, July 12, 2008 (MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS)—The remains of two U.S. soldiers kidnapped during a military patrol last year were found after a U.S.-captured suspect led soldiers to their location, the Pentagon announced Friday.
Spec. Alex. R. Jimenez, 25, of Lawrence, Mass., and Pvt. Byron W. Fouty, 19, of Waterford, Michigan, members of the 10th Mountain Division based at Fort Drum, N.Y., were captured when insurgents overran their observation post . . .
Jimenez’ and F
outy’s remains were found buried together in the open desert west of Jurf al-Sakhr, a one-time al-Qaeda and Sunni insurgent hotbed, after a suspect pointed out their location during a U.S. military interrogation . . .
Their remains were recovered July 8 and flown to Dover, Delaware . . . where they were positively identified . . .
Detroit, July 12, 2008 (YAHOO NEWS)—The bodies of two U.S. soldiers missing in Iraq for more than a year have been found . . .
Jim Waring of the Family Support Group . . . said he spoke to Jimenez’ and Fouty’s families Thursday night.
“It’s going to be tough on them,” he said. “They really had hoped they were alive.”
Waring said his group had a banner for the missing soldiers: Together They Serve Our Nation and Together They Will Come Home.
“They did come home together, just not the way we wanted,” Waring said . . .
At Fort Drum, New York, Sergeant Ronnie Montgomery stood in front of the big glass case at 4th Battalion headquarters that contained the photographs of soldiers in the battalion who had sacrificed their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq. Other than the case with its growing number of photos, Fort Drum seemed to have a life of its own that continued through soldiers coming and going. Nothing changed. Manticore was still playing on the SciFi channel and an infusion of new Joes was already talking about deployment, the Sandbox, and monsters that come out at night.
Among the photographs in the case were those of Chris Messer, Nathan Given, James Connell, Anthony Schober, Chris Murphy, Dan Courneya, Joe Anzak, Byron Fouty, Alex Jimenez . . . Their faces in better times floated in front of the sergeant’s eyes. They were all good men, good soldiers.
The eternal mystery of dying, of death, took an even more mysterious twist in the preserved images of James Connell, Chris Messer, Joe Anzak, and, to a lesser extent, Nathan Given. Chris Messer had died almost exactly the way he dreamed it months in advance, his legs blown off. Somehow, Sergeant Connell knew he would never return home alive and had tried to prepare his brother for it. The marquee of his old high school back home strangely foretold Joe Anzak’s death. Given’s and Messer’s lives seemed inextricably enmeshed during their final days and hours, to the point that Given even switched places with Specialist Jared Isbell in a move that led to his death at Messer’s side.
Perhaps, and Sergeant Montgomery could never reject the hypothesis, there really was a Great Plan in the universe to which man’s fate was sealed and through the portals of which he sometimes caught glimpses of what lay ahead. It was not a soldier’s privilege to understand, but instead merely to accept.
He felt the presence of someone next to him. Startled, he glanced up and saw Lieutenant Colonel Michael Infanti. The two career warriors stood there side by side in front of the case, not having to speak. Montgomery would remain with the 10th as it trained and refitted for its next mission somewhere in the world. Infanti was on his way to a staff position at the Pentagon, where he would finally undergo surgery for his fractured back. He still carried his soldiers’ casualty cards in his pocket. It had taken time, but none was left behind.
“Sergeant Montgomery,” Colonel Infanti said, “do you remember in Band of Brothers when Dick Winters’ grandson asks him, ‘Grandpaw, were you a hero?’ ”
“No,” Winters had said, “but I served with a lot of them.”
“Sometimes it’s easy for us to convince ourselves that the United States is a decadent society,” Infanti said, as much to himself as to the sergeant beside him, “that our young people have gone soft and that we’ll never produce another generation like the one that stormed Normandy on D-day. Anyone who thinks that wasn’t in The Triangle of Death.”
He went quiet. The two soldiers looked at the faces in the glass case.
“One day my grandchildren will ask me about the 4th Battalion in Iraq,” Infanti continued at last. “I’ll tell them these men weren’t heroes because they died. They were heroes because of the way they lived.”
None Left Behind Page 27
