IRAQ: Stories of life and death
During their regular visits to the far-flung U.S. military bases across Iraq, the generals commanding American forces here usually give handshakes, cigars and perhaps one of their personal collector's coins to a few soldiers chosen to be honored for special actions. Those being honored might have led a particularly perilous mission or returned to duty following a bad ambush.
Rarely do their stories capture much attention beyond that of the soldier being honored and the general doing the honoring, but Sgt. Justin Hollis' tale captivated the audience sitting inside a hut-like dwelling at McHenry, a dust-blown base in the battered little city of Hawija, about 110 miles north of Baghdad.
It was 3:30 a.m. on May 2, and a crescent moon was the only light guiding the U.S. military convoy rumbling through the northern Iraqi desert. The hulking vehicles known as MRAPs carrying the soldiers offered them protection from roadside bombs, RPGs and gunfire, but as Hollis learned, armor is no match for fast-rising water.
A tire of one MRAP caught on the edge of the road. The vehicle slid off the road and into a canal. The soldiers inside got out safely, but the gunner's hand was caught beneath the massive vehicle's machine gun, leaving his head a few inches above the water.
According to the account read aloud as Hollis stood silently in front of Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin III, the No. 2 commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Hollis jumped into the water and tried to free the gunner. But MRAPs, short for Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, can weigh up to 80,000 pounds, and it's not easy to free someone caught in its layers of metal. The vehicle began sinking. The gunner was going down with it.
The situation looked hopeless, but Hollis grabbed a plastic tube from his first-aid kit and placed one end of it in the gunner's mouth just as he slipped beneath the water. The other end remained above the surface, allowing the gunner to breathe until a rescue unit arrived to free him.
The audience clapped loudly as Hollis, having shaken Austin's hand and received his thanks after Tuesday's ceremony, left the wooden hut and returned to his soldier's life.
Another story, told recently at a lunch hosted by Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond, the commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad, was just as compelling but had a different ending. Hammond told the story of Army Maj. Mark Rosenberg, whose job was to work alongside Iraqi soldiers facing militia fighters in the Baghdad hot zone of Sadr City.
As Hammond tells it, Rosenberg had been assigned to be the personal advisor to an Iraqi battalion commander in Sadr City. "He wouldn't let him fail," Hammond said of Rosenberg, describing how the major shadowed his Iraqi colleague and nudged him along when the situation seemed hopeless.
Rosenberg's job was to make sure the Iraqi unit stayed out front. But after nearly two days without sleep or food, the U.S. soldier knew it was time to give himself and his men a break. He drew away from the commander. It was April 8. As he drove away from the Iraqis, his vehicle hit a roadside bomb, killing Rosenberg.
"He had an innate ability to lead," Hammond said of Rosenberg, who was one of 52 U.S. troops killed last month and one of at least 4,077 to die since the war began in March 2003.
—Tina Susman in Baghdad
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