Unbearable Emptiness

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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/28/opinion/28kris.html?th

 

July 28, 2004

OP-ED COLUMNIST

 

Unbearable Emptiness

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

 

SALEM, Ore. — Ever since a group of Iraqis told me

last year about seeing a redheaded American soldier

who was captured, held naked and then executed, I've

been haunted by the question of his identity.

 

The first clues were in Nasiriya, Iraq, where in the

aftermath of the war I interviewed the doctors and

hospital staff who had cared for Pfc. Jessica Lynch.

They said that the Pentagon had exaggerated the drama

of her rescue, but what I could never put out of my

mind was their tale of another American, whose name

they never knew.

 

Abdul Hadi, an ambulance driver, tried to pick up a

male American P.O.W. being held by Saddam Fedayeen.

The American, he said, had been stripped naked and

handcuffed, but he was allowed to smoke a cigarette

while under guard. The prisoner, Mr. Hadi said, was

about 19, with short red hair, lightly injured in the

leg.

 

The hospital staff said the guards refused to give up

the American and threatened the ambulance crew with

guns and grenades. So the ambulance retreated - and

several hours later, the same P.O.W. was brought to

the hospital as a corpse, shot dead.

 

I mentioned this American in a sentence in my column

at the time, but cautiously, because I couldn't match

him with any known P.O.W., and I later wondered if the

whole tale had been concocted.

 

Then I heard about Sgt. Donald Walters. He was a cook

who vanished in the same firefight in which Jessica

Lynch was captured, and his body was later recovered

in Nasiriya. But some details didn't fit. He was 33,

not 19. And his hair was said to be blond, not red.

 

So I visited Sergeant Walters's parents, Norman and

Arlene Walters, at their home here in Salem, Ore. As

they sat in their living room, heavy with memorials,

photos and grief, Mr. and Mrs. Walters said that Don's

hair had actually been reddish-blond, he had been

injured in the leg, and he had smoked. Photos also

show he looked young for his age.

 

What's more, the U.S. military recently informed Mr.

and Mrs. Walters that Don had been captured before

being shot.

 

It also seems that the heroism originally attributed

to Private Lynch may actually have been Sergeant

Walters's. Iraqi radio intercepts had described a

blond U.S. soldier fighting tenaciously, and the Army

this year awarded him a posthumous Silver Star in

implicit acknowledgment that he was probably that

soldier.

 

The citation reads: " His actions and selfless courage

under fire resulted in saving lives of several other

members of the convoy " - perhaps including Private

Lynch. His cover fire allowed fellow soldiers to

escape, while he remained alone in a hostile city;

when he ran out of ammunition, he ran but was

captured. So it looks as if the paramount hero of that

day was not the one we thought, but rather a soldier

who died anonymously.

 

Sergeant Walters left three children, then 9 months, 6

years and 8 years old. A veteran of the first gulf

war, he had re-enlisted out of patriotism after 9/11.

 

Red, white and blue are everywhere in Mr. and Mrs.

Walters's house, and Mr. Walters says that if he were

president, he would threaten to nuke Baghdad unless

the insurgency stopped, although in his next breath he

backs off. I asked Mrs. Walters if she felt that her

son had fallen for a noble purpose.

 

" That's hard, " she said, pausing. " I have to feel that

way, because so many soldiers have lost their lives. "

 

One of the revelations in the 9/11 commission report

was the casualness of the resort to war. On the

afternoon of Sept. 11, Donald Rumsfeld spoke of

attacking Saddam Hussein, and President Bush began

asking about Iraq the next day. Older men blithely

found a war for younger men and women to die in.

 

The result is the unbearable emptiness in homes like

the Walters's all across America - and, even more

often, in Iraq. The American victims are

disproportionately from working-class families, not

well represented either in White House meetings or in

this newspaper's readership. It is those families of

the dead and wounded who are bearing 99.9 percent of

the burden of this war.

 

When hawks say that the Iraq war was worth the price,

they should remember that that price is measured in

the lives of people like Don Walters, forever young,

forever heroes, forever gone.

 

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company