The Heavy Burden of Retrieving Fallen Americans in Iraq

By Juliet Macur
The New York Times

Saturday 01 October 2005

Camp Speicher, Iraq - Specialist Ryan Firth leaned out the doorway of the idling Black Hawk helicopter, the thump, thump, thump of the blades above him drowning out all sound, and he grabbed the handles of the green stretcher being passed his way.

Atop that stretcher was a black vinyl body bag. Inside it were the remains of an American contractor killed just hours before in a suicide bombing in downtown Baquba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.

"That's when it hit me," Specialist Firth, 29, said the next day. "To feel the weight of one of your comrades, to lift the dead body of a fellow American, you can never prepare yourself for that."

For a moment, he fell silent. "It wakes you up to reality, you know?" he said as tears welled in his eyes. "There are people dying here."

This was the first time Specialist Firth, a helicopter technician for the Missouri National Guard, was conducting what the military calls a hero mission, which is the process of retrieving the body of an American soldier, or sometimes a dead contractor, from the battlefield. American soldiers in Iraq handle the bodies with ritual and respect, from almost the instant of death to the moment those bodies are loaded onto a cargo plane headed back home. They catalog the names and formally transport the personal belongings, determined to preserve as much dignity as possible for those killed.

Inside the chopper parked in front of Specialist Firth's at Camp Warhorse that day in August was the body of an American soldier who had died in the same attack as the contractor. More than 40 soldiers assembled to pay their last respects before the bodies were flown to a base in Balad, from which they would be shipped back to their families.

The First Battalion (General Support), 150th Aviation, made up mostly of soldiers from the Delaware and New Jersey National Guards, is based here at Camp Speicher, near Tikrit, and has been flying these missions since it arrived in Iraq in December, including a flurry in August - one of the war's bloodiest months for American soldiers - when 85 died.

[The American military reported 13 deaths of American troops in the week that ended Friday, with most killed in explosions when the vehicles they were riding in hit roadside bombs. That brought the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq and identified publicly to 1,928.]

The pilots and crew chiefs from the battalion, called the 1-150th, usually fly their Black Hawks about 900 hours a month in central Iraq, said Capt. Jonathan Lapidow, one of the unit's battle captains. They mainly shuttle soldiers from base to base, or escort generals or visiting entertainers like Jessica Simpson or Toby Keith. Sometimes, they fly combat air assaults to help units on the ground go after insurgents.

Whatever the mission, those pilots fly fast and low over palm groves, salt flats or fields dotted with goats, shepherds and mud huts, occasionally tossing Beanie Babies encased in protective Ziploc bags or red-white-and-blue soccer balls to Iraqi children below.

While they zip around, their radios may capture the sounds of firefights in which American soldiers are wounded or killed. Then, sometimes, the crews from the 1-150th end up recovering the bodies of those soldiers who died on the ground below them that day.

Those bodies are usually transported to the nearest base, and two Black Hawks from the 1-150th escort them from there.

"For some guys, the hero missions are too hard on them emotionally, so they say they don't want to do them anymore," said Captain Lapidow, 34, of Hillsborough, N.J. "But some guys, they just never turn one down."

Chief Warrant Officer Bruce Johnston, 52, a wiry man who wears thick, square glasses, flew 12 hero missions from June through August, and he tears up thinking about each one.

Most of the dead were killed in roadside bomb blasts, which are becoming even more dangerous because insurgents are lacing them with fuel to cause burns, Mr. Johnston said. But some of the soldiers transported by the 1-150th's pilots had died because of land-mine explosions and car bombs. One had committed suicide.

On one mission, Mr. Johnston's chopper and a second Black Hawk carried six dead American soldiers, which would have been an impossible fit if their bodies had not been so broken from the bomb blasts.

Black Hawk pilots on hero missions are given first priority to land at bases. Once on the ground, soldiers from the dead soldier's unit or base often escort each body from a Humvee or an ambulance to the helicopter, at times in the blackness of night, occasionally so soon after the incident that the soldiers who are escorting them are still bloody from the attack that killed their friend.

There, an entourage of soldiers often forms two lines at the helicopter door, and the body passes between them as they give a slow salute. "The hardest part is when the helicopter takes off," said Capt. J. D. Moore, the 1-150th's chaplain, who goes on every hero mission with his unit. "The dust is swirling around those soldiers, and they're just standing at attention."

Mr. Johnston, who is from Carneys Point, N.J., keeps a record of each soldier he transported: name, unit, hometown and cause of death. He said he wanted those details so he could someday visit the soldier's family and tell them he had cared for their loved one, in some small way, when they could not be there. He often volunteers to transport the soldier's or contractor's belongings a few days later, a task called a hero effects mission.

One day in August, Mr. Johnston offered to pick up the personal effects of four soldiers killed in a roadside bombing, but he was told to wait for a general, whom he was transporting that day, to finish a meeting.

Mr. Johnston became more and more upset, insisting that picking up the soldiers' belongings should be the priority. "I'm going to call the general about this, if I have to," he told his battle captain.

Finally given the go-ahead by the general's assistant, he flew as quickly as possible to Camp Speicher to pick up 16 black plastic footlockers, eight Army green duffel bags, two folding chairs and a guitar, all of which belonged to soldiers from the First Brigade Combat Team, Third Infantry Division of Fort Stewart, Ga.

Last names were stenciled on the ends of the duffel bags: BOUCHARD, DOYLE, FUHRMANN, SEAMANS. But the guitar case, black and battered and taped shut with green duct tape, bothered Mr. Johnston the most. On it was an America West Airlines luggage tag with Nathan Bouchard's name and his parents' address in Arizona written on it.

"That's so personal," Mr. Johnston said over the radio from the cockpit. "That poor kid was probably playing that thing just last week."

Eventually, he said, the emotional toll of going on hero missions leads many pilots and crewmen to the chaplain, Captain Moore.

Perhaps it was hosing down the helicopter's floors after a body bag had ripped open midflight or simply coming into contact with death so tangibly. Nearly every day, Captain Moore said, soldiers come to him for counseling because the missions have affected them so deeply. They have affected him as well.

"They say 75 percent of the people die in their sleep, and here, the people all die when they are awake," said Captain Moore, 47, of Virginia. "They are young and awake, and I'm sure they'd want to die like John Wayne, with a bayonet in their hand, marching across a field, but it doesn't end up that way."

"Sometimes the dead soldiers are in body bags only this big," he said, holding his hands about a foot apart. "It's discouraging."

In August, Captain Moore was sitting at Camp Speicher's mess hall when a soldier approached, complaining that another soldier had interrupted his lunch.

Captain Moore glared, then pointed to a dark stain on one of his own tan boots.

"Do you know what that is?" he told the soldier. "That's another's soldier's blood.

"I just came back from a hero mission. So look, man, if you want to whine and cry, get the heck out of here and take it outside."

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