Posted on 03/13/2004 4:15:18 PM PST by twas
For almost 10 months, Esther Macklin sought answers to the most basic of questions: How and why did her son, Pvt. David Evans Jr., die?
She knew he was killed May 25 in an explosion at an Iraqi munitions dump he was guarding.
But Friday, she learned how: through horseplay by fellow soldiers.
One of two soldiers entering a building full of munitions lighted some fuse bundles, and that set off a series of explosions. Evans was killed instantly, and one of the two surviving soldiers now faces homicide and manslaughter charges in his death.
Macklin showed conflicting emotions Friday as she sat at a conference table in True Bethel Baptist Church, fielding questions and speaking in hushed tones about her reaction to the news.
She was pleased that the truth finally had come out. She felt bad for the two other soldiers involved, but she agreed with the serious charges already leveled at one.
And she was shattered by the news that horseplay had killed her son.
"I'm just devastated at the actual truth," she said. "I just can't believe that these kids were trained to be men - a high responsibility - and yet they're doing childish things.
"They should have known better," she added. "They were trained military people. There's no room for that kind of goofing off. Sad but true, I think they should be charged."
Could she ever forgive them?
"I'm sure, with the strength of God and my pastor, I will," she said, in the presence of the Rev. Darius G. Pridgen, pastor of True Bethel Baptist.
The lighting of the fuse bundles, according to what Evans' family heard Friday, set off a shooting gallery of explosions that killed the 18-year-old soldier from Buffalo.
"Your son did not suffer," Army Col. John A. Simpson Jr., garrison commander at Fort Riley, Kan., told Macklin. "We believe he was killed in the second explosion. We don't know how or when or why, but we know it was catastrophic."
Macklin found some consolation in that news.
"That is a relief," she told reporters.
Macklin's comments came after an almost hourlong presentation by Simpson about the death of Evans, the third of six Western New York soldiers to die in the Iraq war.
"We found that it was a tragic accident, but it was due to negligence," Simpson told Evans' family, including his father, David Evans Sr., and at least one of his sisters, Tijuana.
Simpson was among four high-ranking Army officials from Fort Riley and two others from the Defense Department who came to Buffalo on Friday to present the findings of their almost 10-month investigation.
Probes lead to charges
The twin investigations, in Iraq and back home, have led to charges of involuntary manslaughter, negligent homicide and four other charges against Spec. Benjamin Hathaway of Fort Riley, Kan., Army investigators said.
"It's sad that a tragic accident took your son's life," Simpson told Macklin. "(His fellow soldiers) were well-trained. They were a good unit. Why they did that, I don't know, ma'am."
Simpson did suggest one possible theory, questioning whether the soldiers had lighted the bundles as a way to break the monotony amid the stress of wartime.
But he quickly added: "I don't want to speculate why. They're at war. I don't know."
Maj. Jeffrey Buczkowski, public affairs officer from Fort Riley and a Buffalo native, said investigators still are trying to determine what role the second soldier had in the lighting of the bundles.
"The truth is, they shouldn't have been playing with the ammunition," he said. "They were ordered not to, and they were trained not to."
After praising Evans as a great soldier who went willingly to his mission with the 977th Military Police Company, Simpson patiently recounted the events of the morning of May 25 at the munitions dump in Ad Diwaniyah, south of Baghdad.
What happened
It was breakfast time, and between eating their rations and cleaning up, the three soldiers who entered the munitions building were not wearing their body armor. The partially caved-in building contained everything from artillery rounds and other large projectiles to single bullets.
One soldier picked up three bundles of unexploded fuses, something that they're explicitly trained not to do, Simpson said. Then one soldier suggested that the other light it.
One of the two soldiers lighted the bundle. It went out, and one of them lighted it again.
That lighting led to a chain reaction and a large explosion that sent Evans and the other two soldiers running and diving for cover. The second explosion apparently killed him.
"It was worse than ground combat, because projectiles were flying through the air," Simpson said. "Bullets were whizzing by at all different locations."
One of the other two soldiers suffered a major head wound; the other escaped with no serious injuries. With shrapnel still falling from the sky and unexploded ordnance still hampering the rescue and search efforts, several attempts to find Evans were unsuccessful.
About eight hours after the initial explosion, Evans' body was discovered.
"We lost a great American," Simpson said. "We lost a great soldier."
Macklin, frequently pulling out tissues during the recounting of her son's death, thanked the investigators for their thoroughness and for coming to Buffalo.
Speaking in a tone barely above a whisper, as family members and reporters leaned closer to hear, Macklin turned to Simpson and said, "I need to find some closure with this, and I don't have it today."
The hourlong meeting with Army officials began with a brief clash between two factions of the family that have been arguing about Evans' son, now 13 months old. Macklin asked several people to leave, and they did. But after a prayerful meeting with Pridgen, Macklin let them return.
"This is a mom who has lost her son and is hurting like all get-out," Pridgen explained. "Sometimes we do react like that when we lose a child or anyone close to us."
I've scraped up a lot of such "bored and curious" folks in my career. Sadly it really is a task done with a paint scraper and a mop when UXO is involved.
SOP for us when we needed security on a task we were involved in for demolition was to establish a perimeter on the dangerous ordnance. Never in and among it unless ya had a crab on yer chest.
Dunno what they were doing in the damaged bunkers. They had no business there for obvious reasons. Hell we would'nt even loiter there after we were done working.
Stay safe !
tee hee tee heee.
I will not debate that lack of discipline is to blame. What I will bring into question is how is this different then any other war?
Is this different than Marines getting into a fire fight in Beirut while they were out liberating abandoned alcohol? Score = 2 wounded Marines, about 10 dead Lebanese Muslims, and 1 Sgt busted to Pvt. Or, what about the camel that was shot with an AT-4 in Gulf War pt 1? Personal accounts say the AT-4 made a fist sized hole through the camel and supplied a battalion with camel burgers at the expense of the perps? How about a famous celeb being discharged for joy riding in an M-4 tank in WWII? Point is that stuff like this happens.
This isn't an attempt to justify things like this. I jumped on people under my command for pulling dumb-assed dangerous stuff (like going out on a weather-deck in the middle of a typhoon), and got jumped on for doing dumb-assed dangerous stuff (like going out on a weather-deck in the middle of a typhoon, to see what the big deal was). Things like this happen and sometimes people die.
Effective leadership, and sense of mission will minimize incidents like this. They are going to happen, though. These guys are young, separated from normality, and generally stressed out. They will do what it takes to relieve the pressure, even if it is a stupid act that runs a good risk of killing them.
Sorry LVM, but your interpretation of the meaning of "negligent" is incorrect, both from a legal standpoint, and a practical one. Note the word "failure" in the definition you quoted. A person is negligent when they should have done something, but did not.
If, for example, the soldiers noticed some smoking cigarette butts near the ammo stockpile and failed to extinguish them, that would have been negligent. If they had been lawfully ordered to light the fuses, but did so carelessly and thus caused the explosion, that too would have been negligence. But these clowns did not fail to prevent the mishap, nor were they careless in executing an assigned task: they acted with willful disregard to their orders and the dangerousness of the situation. Their direct actions resulted in the death of two soldiers.
I agree. But that was not the point of my post. I realize that their will always be military mishaps, both in combat and in training. I certainly witnessed a number of them during my years of service as a line officer.
My issue is with the new politically-corrected and pussified officers (thank you Pat Schroeder, Barbara Boxer, et al.) that cannot call a spade a spade.
My bust, I thought the idea was carring down to the point of the spear.
In my opinion, any soldier who does his duty is a great soldier. Heroes raise the bar.
I see no reason to find fault with this article based on this man's relative greatness.
The word "failure" means a lot - legal or not.
Yes, "failure" to put out the smoking butt in your example does indeed mean negligent behaviour.
I'm not a lawyer, but I bet I could prove - from the survivor - and any (you choose) Army types of their rank and MOS - that what they did was, "should have done something, but did not." (your words).
Someone there was completely and totally negligent. That would be at least two people...
The idiot that lit the fuse. Hands down. Failure to exercise the care that a prudent person usually exercises..
Now tell me that the person that lit the fuse, exercised the care that a prudent person would usually use
You are implying that because the Army did not tell him - explicitly - "and never - ever - light a fuse when you are within close proximity of other explosive devices..." that the person that lit the fuse was not negligent.
The other party is just as negligent, if they saw what was going on, and did not take appropriate action to stop the "failure to exercise the care that a prudent person usually exercises."
Negligence, obviously, means something different to each of us.
LVM
Redfenders ping. My best guess would be bagged powder increment charges for mortar projectiles, not *exactly* fuses, but that'd be a fairly close term to use to describe one to a civilian with no general understanding of military ordnance or ammunition.
His family says one member of his unit was killed, and two others wounded, so he has been hit hard by the loss. And they say his humor and caring keeps his comrades-in-arms going.
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Army Pvt. David Evans Jr.
The coroner for whom I worked would have categorized the deaths as death by misadventure, I believe.
-archy-/-
The less said about tankers, the better, since by virtue of their crew-served weapon, they automatically always have others with whom they've closely worked and trained around; the same is true of some helicopter crews, especially in *hog* gunships. But certain individual aircraft drivers on their own trying to outdo their own *personal best* can at times be even worse in the same respect....
The other party is just as negligent, if they saw what was going on, and did not take appropriate action to stop the "failure to exercise the care that a prudent person usually exercises."
When the Army first began issuing the M33 and M67 *tennis ball* or *little green apple* fragmentation grenades in Vietnam as replacements for the larger M67 *lemon* frag, there was a real unfortunate incident involving two guys who were playing handball with one off the side of a Vietnamese M41 tank. Part of the attraction for them was no doubt the metallic ponk! that resounded when the thing bounced off the tank's unyielding armor...
Of course, that was a fairly sensitive if pretty well-protercted blasting cap at the end of the grenade's four second delay fuse, and throwing blasting caps at a solid steel wall in 100º+ temperatures is not a real sharp idea. Eventually, the detonator did what detonators are supposed to do.
The casualty report on the two guys listed their cause of death as traumatic decapitation of all extremities resulting from explosion. That was imprecise and general, but got the idea across; other frags they had immediately available detonated along with the one that was the cause of the problem. Well, the damned things were designed to be easier to fit the hand and throw.
D'OH! Good call-Should have thought of that. That would make a lot of sense- we use to light the "cheese charges" and throw them around. When I saw "fuse" I as thinking of the things you screw into the fuse well...
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