6
KIA Together
SERGEANT!” THE BREATHLESS soldier called to Willingham as he was entering his tent at Falcon after dinner that evening and about to let Lucca out of her kennel. “The patrol Kory was on was hit by an IED. It doesn’t look good.”
A sense of numb panic, a sick surge, gripped Willingham.
“They’re missing two right now, and there’s some guys wounded. We don’t know anything else.”
Willingham hurried to the ops center behind the soldier. He was surprised he could move. His limbs felt like lead.
The soldiers manning the ops center filled him in.
“We got two missing. Wiens and Salazar, the security guy.”
He maintained his composure, solemn, strong, tough, as they waited for more news. Nothing got in his way of being a marine on the outside. Especially as the only marine at this whole damned FOB. He was glad they couldn’t see what was going on inside him.
The soldier monitoring the secure line between Patrol Base Murray and FOB Falcon kept them up-to-date as he got word on the situation.
“They’ve sent out a helicopter.”
I should have stayed. I should have been the one out there.
Ten minutes that seemed like hours later, more news.
“They’ve found what was left of the dog.”
Cooper, no . . .
“They’ve located the victims. PFC Bruce Salazar. PFC Kory Wiens. They were KIA immediately, during a mission near Muhammad Sath.”
“I’m sorry, Staff Sergeant.”
Willingham walked back to his tent. Their tent. Wiens had just been here a few hours ago.
He let Lucca out of her kennel as he looked around the tent. Wiens’s belongings were everywhere. Freshly folded clothing lay across his cot. His well-worn running shoes peeked out from under his cot. Cooper’s “extra” toys lay in the last spot the dog had been playing with them.
The force of the blow hit him, and he couldn’t stand anymore. He sat on the plywood floor and broke down. Silent weeping, building up inside for the last hour, now still silent—he didn’t want anyone to hear him.
Lucca’s eyes fixed on him, and her dark brows pushed together. She walked over, lay down close to him, and put her head on his lap. She had never seen him or anyone like this before, and her ears sank low.
“Lucca, it should have been me out there. Not him. I had only one dog team to bring home safely, and I couldn’t even do that.”
Lucca, the devoted marine, stayed at his side the rest of the afternoon.
EARLIER THAT DAY, at a Department of Defense news briefing, Major General Rick Lynch, commander, Multinational Division Center and Third Infantry Division, updated media on Operation Marne Torch via a teleconference from Iraq.
At the end of questioning by reporters from NBC, CNN, Reuters, and other news outlets, he thanked them for what they do to keep the public informed about the war. And then he digressed slightly.
You know, on the 4th of July, I had the great opportunity to be involved in the re-enlistment ceremony and the citizenship ceremony for about 600 great Americans; 500-plus soldiers re-enlisted, almost 200 soldiers became American citizens, and by golly, I was so very proud to be part of that. And every day when I’m out and about wearing 60 pounds of body armor in 111-degree temperature, I re-enlist soldiers, and they raise their right hand and say, “I’ll support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” And they’re doing that between attacks, between memorial services, between mortar rounds coming in, so I just take such confidence in the fact that we got great Americans who have committed themselves to service to our nation, and I’d like you to have that same encouragement.
You know, it bothers me when people say the Army is on the verge of breaking. We’ll never break because we’ve got great soldiers.
The reports on the incident laid out the event in the dispassionate manner of such documents:
Wiens was assigned to Bravo 1/30th infantry for the mission. The staff sergeant that Wiens was attached to for the mission received instructions for the dog team to search a nearby farm, which consisted of a walled compound that had suspicious holes dug around it. The squad picked up Wiens and Cooper at a nearby school and briefed them on the situation. They were to search that building. The dog had a possible find, which Wiens noted, but they all believed it was residual odor left over from something previous. The team moved to an open inner corral. He provided the dog water and a rest break. A detonation cord approximately two feet in length was discovered and identified by Wiens as a Yugoslavian det cord.
Wiens and Cooper continued their search of the compound. There were no hits from that area. Wiens dropped a training aid so the dog wouldn’t get bored, and the dog played with a ball for a while. The staff sergeant told them to come back out. Wiens saw a haystack and sent Cooper to check it out, following him. That’s when the IED was detonated. Wiens and Cooper were killed instantly and four others were injured. PFC Bruce Salazar, who was working security for the team, was also KIA. They were all wearing protective gear. It is believed the IED was detonated from a truck that was passing by on the road. It was either a cell phone detonation or command trigger.
They are the first military dog team known to be killed together since the beginning of the war.
THE SMELL—SICKLY sweet and chemical—hit Willingham as he entered the morgue at FOB Falcon with Lucca. It had been three days since the IED killed Wiens, Cooper, and Salazar. He had barely slept or eaten since. Sleep came for only an hour or so when it did. When he ventured out of his tent, soldiers would come up to him to pat him on the back and say they were so sorry. He wanted to keep upholding the image of a strong marine, but at the same time he wished there were other marines there, or another dog team. He might have opened up to them. Nice as everyone was being, no one asked him if he needed help, if he wanted to talk about it. He wouldn’t have told them he did, because at the time he didn’t realize it himself.
Lucca pulled on the leash to get out of the morgue. Unflappable in mortar attacks and firefights, she wanted to run out of this place. He didn’t know if it was the pungent smell of morgue, or if maybe she detected, through all the strange morgue odors, the scent of Cooper’s remains. He was zipped in a body bag on one of three nylon stretchers. Body bags containing Wiens and Salazar rested on the other two stretchers.
“It’s OK, Lucca,” Willingham told her in a gentle, weakened voice. “Hold on.”
They were here to help send their friends home. Eleven soldiers joined them in the morgue to begin the Fallen Hero Ceremony. Everyone wore simple cammies, no gear, no weapon, no covers. Four men were assigned to each stretcher. Willingham got Wiens’s. A nod of the head, and the first four lifted Salazar’s stretcher and exited the morgue. Willingham’s right hand gripped a metal handle in the front. He held Lucca’s leash in his left. He and three soldiers lifted the stretcher and followed. Cooper’s stretcher was carried out last.
This was the last time Willingham would walk with his friend. He tried not to feel anything as they made their way to the flight line—a hundred yards. Two Black Hawks were waiting. A chaplain said some words, and the soldiers were loaded on, Salazar in the first Black Hawk and Wiens and Cooper together in the second.
The men who had carried the stretchers walked back to a line of another dozen soldiers who had come out for the ceremony. They stood in formation. As the helicopters rose, Willingham stood at attention, per marine tradition. The soldiers saluted and stayed that way until the helicopters were out of sight. Lucca, calm again, just sat and took it all in.
THE SUN WAS low, and the evening comfortable. The way the birds were singing, if you closed your eyes you could be in a lush English garden having tea. Palm trees rustled in the light breeze behind the concrete T-walls. But the memorial at FOB Kalsu on July 12 for Corporal Kory D. Wiens—he had received a posthumous promotion—brought little comfort to Willingham. He listened to officers and his kennel master from Slayer talk about what a great soldier, handler, and man Wiens was, and what a perfect team he made with Cooper. But as he sat in his folding chair, one thought would not leave him.
I’m the one who got him killed. This wonderful person everyone loved, I’m responsible for his death. I’m the reason they’re all here.
The firing of volleys, then “Taps” played from a recording—the ceremony brought tears almost all around.
Willingham sat by Knight—one of many handlers flown in for the memorial. They faced a little bench that held the usual heartbreaking downrange memorial arrangement—combat boots, a helmet, flags, a Purple Heart, and a photo of Wiens and Cooper. Willingham’s weight loss was noticeable to Knight. He was worried about him. After the memorial, Willingham told Knight about his guilt, how he couldn’t shake it and didn’t think he ever deserved to get rid of it—an albatross he tied to his own neck.
“You didn’t do anything wrong. You did not get him killed,” Knight tried his best to reassure him. “There’s nothing you can do about it. It was God’s will. Every person that was that perfect always dies. Like God comes and says, ‘OK, you pass, come on up!’”
Willingham looked at him and nodded.
“You know,” Knight continued, looking up to the darkening sky, “I’m always gonna keep some little part of me a sinner.”
OF THE THIRTY-SEVEN dogs lined up outside the Faith Evangelical Free Church in Dallas, Oregon, on July 18, not one barked, growled, or whined as they stood at their handlers’ sides during the ninety-minute service in Wiens’s hometown. To Danielle Roche, it seemed like the dogs—army, navy, air force, marines, and police—knew what they were here for and were paying their last respects to a fellow dog and his handler.
Roche had been back home on a short R & R break in Texas when she got the phone call. She felt as if someone had gut punched her, leaving her with no breath. She collapsed into a chair. The next days were a blur of phone calls, travel arrangements, and raw emptiness. She spoke at a memorial at Fort Leonard Wood, and now she was here, in front of this packed church, in her Class A uniform. She looked out at Wiens’s father and brothers—one brother could have been his twin—and had to pause to collect herself as she finished her eulogy.
“Corporal Wiens always consistently wanted to be a better soldier and person even if the road was long and narrow. I never discovered why he was so hungry. I never discovered what he was so hungry for, or why he pushed himself so hard, but this was Corporal Wiens. He pushed himself to be the best. He wanted to be the best. If you know Corporal Wiens and think about the way he was, you’d realize that this was the way he was in all aspects of his life. . . .
“It’s very reassuring to know that Wiens and Cooper are together, and continue to dance in heaven. May God bless Corporal Wiens and Cooper.”
THE CREMATED REMAINS of Wiens and Cooper were buried together at Salt Creek Cemetery after a last ride with a long police entourage and the Patriot Guard Riders escorting them on motorcycles. Wiens’s father was given a small box containing some of the ashes from his son and Cooper, mixed together as he requested, “because they were inseparable in life and in death,” he said. He brought them home with him and placed them in a special memorial cabinet in the living room of his double-wide trailer, so he could be with them every day.
FOB FALCON HAD never felt so lonely to Willingham, even back in those first days when he was the only dog handler. Wiens’s belongings had been inventoried and cleared out of the tent shortly after he died. Willingham happened to be there when the lieutenant came in to do the job. He helped out. As Willingham called out his friend’s personal belongings, the lieutenant documented them on a form.
“Three T-shirts.”
Check.
“Five pairs of socks.”
Check.
“Seven dog toys.”
He paused, took a breath.
Check.
Other than Cooper’s toys, the rest of the items could have been almost anyone’s, so he tried not to think about whose they were. All the photos and videos Willingham had taken were on disks, so he didn’t have to face them. The belongings inventoried, they were locked up, tagged, and prepared to ship home.
And now there were two new handlers here. Good guys, but they weren’t Wiens and Cooper. He had to help the handlers get up to speed. He had them train on local odors, gave them tips on the best search techniques for what lay ahead. He checked out how they worked in real scenarios.
He was lonelier than ever.
One handler froze when he ventured outside the wire with Willingham, not far from where Wiens had been killed. His dog waited for him, but the guy couldn’t move. It was as if his boots were made of iron and the earth under him was a strong magnet. The only way he could proceed was if Willingham led the way to the objective, telling him to step where he was stepping. And even then, the handler was sweating.
He had passed the validation process at Baghdad, but that was a controlled situation, no real IEDs, no chance of death. The ultimate test was outside the wire. Most handlers couldn’t wait to get out. Every handler was supposed to be ready. But it wasn’t for everyone. Willingham was glad that FOBs also needed handlers inside the gate checking vehicles.
The other dog team was strong, ready to go. But Willingham didn’t want that dog or handler going out, either. He was driven by the idea that he would not let anyone get hurt again.
Knight had told him, “It’s not your fault. You did nothing wrong.” He repeated the sentences in his head, but they were just words. They didn’t change emotional realities. Instead of sending the strong dog team off on missions they were fully capable of handling, he tried to take many of them himself. There was always a reason. He had to get Lucca back up to speed after being idle for a while. Or there was some stuff on this mission he’d seen before and he needed to be the one to deal with it. He sent them out on a few easy missions, with trepidation, and was relieved when they came back unscathed.
After Wiens died, Willingham wanted to put it to al-Qaeda more than ever, and this section of the Triangle of Death was providing plenty of opportunity. It felt good to keep busy. Focusing on bombs prevented him from going to dark places, at least while he was out there. On missions, he was like Lucca, completely attuned to the surroundings. He was one with the mission, one with Lucca.
But then the orders came in. He was to leave FOB Falcon for a month and go to FOB Kalsu, where Wiens had been based before coming up to FOB Falcon and Patrol Base Murray. They had been counting on Wiens coming back and needed another handler. From what Wiens had told him, the action down there had been nothing compared to what was going on with Operation Marne Torch. Willingham felt like someone was taking pity on him, giving him an easy rotation. It was the opposite of what he wanted.
As he packed up his and Lucca’s gear, anger welled up in him. He didn’t want a break. He wanted to be where the action was, where he and Lucca could do what they needed to do. As if reading his thoughts, Lucca came and sat down next to the cot, where he was folding the Marine Corps flag into a small square so it wouldn’t get wrinkled in his duffel. She stared at him, eyes calm and steady. He relaxed a little.