 7 US troops among
9 NATO dead in Afghanistan
By DEB RIECHMANN and MIRWAIS KHAN, Associated Press – Thu May 26, 4:48 pm ET
KABUL, Afghanistan – Nine NATO service members were killed Thursday in Afghanistan, including seven U.S. troops among eight who died when a powerful bomb exploded in a field where they were patrolling on foot, officials said.
Two Afghan policemen also died and two others were wounded in the explosion in the mountainous Shorabak district of Kandahar province, 12 miles (19 kilometers) from the Pakistan border, said Gen. Abdul Raziq, chief of the Afghan border police in the province.
"Two months ago, we cleared this area of terrorists, but still they are active there," Raziq said.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the blast.
"A bomb was planted for them in a field," Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi told The Associated Press in a telephone call.
A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose the information, confirmed that seven American service members died in the bombing.The international military coalition reported that one additional NATO service member was killed Thursday when a helicopter crashed in the east.
U.S. officials said seven American soldiers were killed in the bombing. NATO said an eighth soldier was also killed, but his nationality was not immediately released. It was the deadliest day for coalition forces in Afghanistan since April 27, when a veteran Afghan military pilot opened fire at Kabul airport and killed eight U.S. troops and an American civilian contractor.
Thursday's blast was the worst single attack against NATO forces by one of the Taliban's crude, homemade bombs since October 2009. Seven soldiers from a unit based in Fort Lewis, Washington, died Oct. 27, 2009 when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb in Arghandab district, also in Kandahar province.
"It was a big, powerful blast," said Gen. Tefeer Khan Ghogyaria, who oversees Afghan border police in three provinces in the south. "A container of explosives was placed in the ground and it exploded when the NATO forces were passing. They were on a foot patrol."
Roadside bombs killed 268 American troops in Afghanistan last year, a 60 percent increase over the previous year, even as the Pentagon employed new measures to counter the Taliban's makeshift weapon of choice. Defense officials attributed the rise in casualties to the surge in U.S. forces in Afghanistan last year.
The number of U.S. troops wounded by what the military terms improvised explosive devices also soared, according to the most recent U.S. defense figures. There were 3,366 U.S. service members injured in IED blasts — up from the 1,211 hurt by the militants' crudely made bombs in 2009, the figures show.
Officials with the Pentagon's Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, based outside Washington, has said that additional explosive sensors, bomb analysts and specially trained dogs have helped battle the roadside bombs.
Last year, the Pentagon provided $495 million to buy 34 tethered surveillance blimps that give troops a bird's eye view of certain areas and sent in more unmanned surveillance aircraft so route-clearance patrols would have the benefit of full-motion video. The Pentagon also delivered more than 5,000 hand-held bomb detectors, improved training and sent additional equipment to Afghanistan to counter the threat.
Southern and eastern Afghanistan are the most volatile areas in Afghanistan.
Tens of thousands of U.S., NATO and Afghan forces have been working for months to rout the Taliban from their strongholds in the south. The Taliban have retaliated with targeted assassinations of Afghan officials and attacks on Afghan and coalition forces. Eastern Afghanistan, along the Pakistan border, also has been the scene of heavy violence.
 On May 1, insurgents declared the start of a spring offensive against NATO and the Afghan government. NATO has been expecting the Taliban to stage a series of spectacular and complex attacks, and the group has already carried out a number of them recently.
The effectiveness of the Taliban's long-awaited spring campaign, code-named Badr after one of the Prophet Muhammad's decisive military victories, could affect the size of President Barack Obama's planned drawdown of U.S. troops in July. Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, has said the size of the withdrawal will depend on conditions on the ground.
The alliance has committed itself to handing over control of security in the country to Afghans by 2014. Thirty-eight international service members have been killed so far this month, including at least 13 Americans. So far this year, 189 coalition troops have died in Afghanistan.
Khan reported from Kandahar, Afghanistan.
Buckles, last WWI doughboy, dies at 110 in W.Va.
By VICKI SMITH, Associated Press – Mon Feb 28, 6:13 pm ET
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – He didn't seek the spotlight, but when Frank Buckles outlived every other American who'd served in World War I, he became what his biographer called "the humble patriot" and final torchbearer for the memory of that fading conflict.
Buckles enlisted in World War I at 16 after lying about his age. He died Sunday on his farm in Charles Town, nearly a month after his 110th birthday.
He had devoted the last years of his life to campaigning for greater recognition for his former comrades, prodding politicians to support a national memorial in Washington and working with friend and family spokesman David DeJonge on a biography.
"We were always asking ourselves: How can we represent this story to the world?" DeJonge said Monday. "How can we make sure World War I isn't forgotten."
Buckles asked his daughter, Susannah Flanagan, about progress toward a national memorial every week, sometimes daily.
"He was sad it's not completed," DeJonge said. "It's a simple straightforward thing to do, to honor Americans."When asked in February 2008 how it felt to be the last survivor, Buckles said simply, "I realized that somebody had to be, and it was me."
Only two known veterans remain, according to the Order of the First World War, a Florida group whose members are descendants of WWI veterans and include Buckles' daughter. The survivors are Florence Green in Britain and Claude Choules in Australia, said Robert Carroon, the group's senior vice commander.
Choules, who served in Britain's Royal Navy, was born in that country but now lives in Australia. Green turned 110 on Feb. 19, and Choules turns 110 in March, he said.
Born in Missouri in 1901 and raised in Oklahoma, Buckles visited a string of military recruiters after the United States in April 1917 entered what was called "the war to end all wars." He was repeatedly rejected before convincing an Army captain he was 18.
More than 4.7 million people joined the U.S. military from 1917-18. By 2007, only three survived. Buckles went to Washington that year to serve as grand marshal of the national Memorial Day parade.
Unlike Buckles, the other two survivors were still in basic training in the United States when the war ended, and they did not make it overseas. When they died in late 2007 and 2008, Buckles became the last so-called doughboy — and a soft-spoken celebrity.
He got fan mail almost every day, DeJonge said, and had enough birthday cards to fill several bushel baskets.
DeJonge had visited Buckles late last week and was driving back to Michigan with about 5,000 letters to organize and answer when he got the call telling him his friend had died.
"The letters are so heartfelt," he said. "Each night, Susannah would go in and sit at Papa's bedside and read them to Frank. That kept him going."
Buckles had been battling colds and other minor ailments this winter, but he was not ill at the time of his death. The day before he died was warm, DeJonge said, and he spent three hours sitting in the sunshine on the porch of his farmhouse, talking with his daughter.
She worked diligently to keep Buckles in his own home, even though it exhausted his life savings. DeJonge said home health nurses and other medical care cost about $120,000 a year.
Details for services and arrangements will be announced later this week, but the family is planning a burial in Arlington National Cemetery. In 2008, friends persuaded the federal government to make an exception to its rules for who can be interred there.
Buckles had already been eligible to have his cremated remains housed at the cemetery. Burial, however, normally requires meeting several criteria, including earning one of five medals, such as a Purple Heart. Buckles never saw combat but once joked, "Didn't I make every effort?" U.S. Rep. Shelley
Moore Capito and the rest of West Virginia's congressional delegation were also working Monday on a plan to allow Buckles to lie in repose in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol.
According to the Architect of the Capitol's website, the last person to do so was President Gerald Ford. The honor is reserved mostly for elected and military officials, but others have included civil rights activist Rosa Parks and unknown soldiers from both World Wars and the Korean War.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller called Buckles "a wonderfully plainspoken man and an icon for the World War I generation" and said he will continue fighting for the memorial Buckles wanted.
"He lived a long and rich life as a true American patriot," said Sen. Joe Manchin, "and I hope that his family's loss is lightened with the knowledge that he was loved and will be missed by so many." The family asked that donations be made to the National World War One Legacy Project.
The project is managed by the nonprofit Survivor Quest and will educate students about Buckles and WWI through a documentary and traveling educational exhibition.
"We have lost a living link to an important era in our nation's history," said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki. "But we have also lost a man of quiet dignity, who dedicated his final years to ensuring the sacrifices of his fellow 'Doughboys' are appropriately commemorated."
In spring 2007, Buckles told The Associated Press of the trouble he went through to get into the military. "I went to the state fair up in Wichita, Kansas, and while there, went to the recruiting station for the Marine Corps," he said. "The nice Marine sergeant said I was too young when I gave my age as 18, said I had to be 21."
Buckles returned a week later.
"I went back to the recruiting sergeant, and this time I was 21," he said with a grin. "I passed the inspection ... but he told me I just wasn't heavy enough." Then he tried the Navy, whose recruiter told Buckles he was flat-footed. Buckles wouldn't quit. In Oklahoma City, an Army captain demanded a birth certificate.
"I told him birth certificates were not made in Missouri when I was born, that the record was in a family Bible. I said, 'You don't want me to bring the family Bible down, do you?'" Buckles said with a laugh. "He said, 'OK, we'll take you.'"
Buckles served in England and France, working mainly as a driver and a warehouse clerk. An eager student of culture and language, he used his off-duty hours to learn German, visit cathedrals, museums and tombs, and bicycle in the French countryside. After Armistice Day, Buckles helped return prisoners of war to Germany. He returned to the United States in January 1920.
After the war, he returned to Oklahoma, then moved to Canada, where he worked a series of jobs before heading for New York City. There, he landed jobs in banking and advertising.
But it was the shipping industry that suited him best, and he worked around the world for the White Star Line Steamship Co. and W.R. Grace & Co. In 1941, while on business in the Philippines, Buckles was captured by the Japanese. He spent more than three years in prison camps.
"I was never actually looking for adventure," he once said. "It just came to me." |
Marine Lance Cpl. Jose Gutierrez
Died March 21, 2003 serving during Operation Iraqi Freedom
22, of Los Angeles; assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, Camp Pendleton, Calif.; killed in action in Southern Iraq.
Guatemala native put off college to join Marines
By Martin Kasindorf USA Today
LOS ANGELES — One of the first U.S. servicemen killed in combat in Iraq was not a citizen of the country for which he sacrificed his life.
Lance Cpl. Jose Gutierrez, 22, a rifleman with the Marines, died in a firefight March 21 near Umm Qasr. Born in Guatemala, Gutierrez held permanent U.S. resident status, which he obtained in 1999.
At 14, with his parents dead, Gutierrez followed the path of 700,000 of his countrymen to California. He made the 2,000-mile journey from his Guatemala City neighborhood without entry papers.
He hopped 14 freight trains to get through Mexico. U.S. immigration authorities detained him.
Fernando Castillo, Guatemala’s consul general in Los Angeles, says the United States doesn’t deport Guatemalan minors who arrive without family. Gutierrez was made a ward of Los Angeles Juvenile Court.
He was placed in a series of group homes and foster families. He learned English and finished high school.
When he reached 18, he got residency documents, Castillo said. Marcelo Mosquera, a machinist from Ecuador, and his wife, Nora, were the last couple that sheltered the lanky teenager.
They cared for two younger foster children, as well, at their home in suburban Lomita, said Hector Tobar, a family friend.
Neighbors told the Los Angeles Times that Gutierrez acted as the big brother, taking the younger kids to the nearby McDonald’s.
Tobar said Gutierrez talked of becoming an architect but put college plans on hold to join the Marine Corps a year ago.
Jackie Baker, the Mosqueras’ adult daughter, told Spanish-language KVEA-TV here that Gutierrez “wanted to give the United States what the United States gave to him. He came with nothing.
This country gave him everything.”
The U.S. Embassy notified Gutierrez’s older sister, his only surviving relative, of his death. He will be buried in Guatemala at her request, Castillo said.
_ The Associated Press contributed to this report
Guatemalan family remembers fallen son
GUATEMALA CITY — When Engracia Sirin Gutierrez heard the pounding at the front door, she knew it had to be bad news.
It was 2:30 a.m. Saturday, March 22, and a group of six officials, including John Hamilton, the U.S. ambassador to Guatemala, had arrived to tell her that her brother had been killed in the fighting in Iraq.
On Friday, Marine Lance Cpl. Jose Gutierrez, 22, became one of the first combat casualties of the war, killed in battle around the port city of Umm Qasr. “It was difficult to believe,” Sirin said March 25. “I thought it was a mistake.”
Sirin said her brother left Guatemala at 11 and traveled by train alone across Mexico, looking for a better life in the United States.
He found a foster family in Lomita, Calif., where he went to high school. In September, Gutierrez became a rifleman with the Marines.
“Be proud of me because I’m going to be a soldier,” Sirin remembers her brother telling her when he joined up.
Sirin said the last time she spoke to her brother was by telephone on New Year’s Eve. “He told me, ‘Sister, take care of yourself because I’m going to war,”’ she said.
On a simple wooden chest of drawers in her four-room home, a single candle shed light on photos of her brother in uniform.
In California, an American flag hung at half-staff outside the home of Gutierrez’s foster family. The front porch was lined with pots of geraniums, each with a flag and a sign that read “United We Stand.”
His foster mother, Nora Mosquera, said Gutierrez never forgot the sister he left behind in Guatemala and always hoped to bring her to the United States. His body will be returned to Guatemala for burial in his homeland.
“This is his country,” Sirin said. “Yes, he left, but he did so because he had to.”
Sirin, 32, said her parents were killed when she and her brother were very young.
Both siblings quit primary school to go work and Gutierrez landed a job at a steel factory. The last time she saw him was on the day he left for the United States 11 years ago.
After he settled in California, he began to call her every week and eventually sent gifts, money and pictures of himself back to her, Sirin said. Sirin said her brother had dreamed of becoming an architect or playing soccer for a popular Guatemalan team.
“He was sweet, respectful and was everybody’s friend,” Sirin said.— Sergio DeLeon, Associated Press
Visit The Washington Post's Faces of The Fallen to honor the most recent casualties, total fatalities, tributes to the fallen, The Reporting for Duty Blog & Updates from Walter Reed including Benefits Watch for our brave service menbers. |
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Spec. Donald L. Nichols
Hometown: Shell Rock, Iowa, U.S. Age: 21 years old Died: April 13, 2011 in Operation Enduring Freedom. Unit: Army, 1st Battalion, 133rd Infantry Regiment, Iowa Army National Guard, Waterloo, Iowa Incident: Died in Laghman province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked his unit using a makeshift bomb. |
1st Lt. Omar J. Vazquez
Hometown: Hamilton, New Jersey, U.S. Age: 25 years old Died: April 22, 2011 in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Unit:Army, 2nd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, Fort Hood, Texas. Incident: Killed in Numaniyah, Iraq when insurgents attacked his unit with a makeshift bomb |
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