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Thursday, July 28, 2005
A farewell to fallen comrades
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Striker, Iraq � They gathered on a hot and dusty night, the thick haze blurring the normal fiery hues of the setting sun in Baghdad.
Photos from the memorial ceremoniesIn pairs, soldiers of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team stepped on the stage to say goodbye to four of their fallen comrades.
They knelt in front of the helmets, boots, dog tags and upended rifles that symbolized the four men from the 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment killed Sunday when their Humvee was torn apart by a massive roadside bomb in southwest Baghdad.
When the roll was called for Alpha Company’s second platoon, an eerie silence followed the names of Staff Sgt. Carl Fuller of Covington, Sgt. James Kinlow of Thomson, Sgt. John Thomas of Valdosta and Spc. Jacques “Gus” Brunson of Sylvester.
Hundreds of soldiers attended the memorial service for the four Georgians Thursday evening at Camp Striker, the second such somber remembrance the state’s citizen soldiers have attended since arriving in Iraq almost two months ago. Sgt. Chad Mercer of Waycross, also a soldier in the 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry, died earlier this month in a vehicle accident.
As darkness began to blanket the camp, soldiers shared their memories of the four who died.
Lt. Col. Steve McCorkle, commander of the 2nd Battalion, said Brunson was a man who enjoyed the outdoors, especially hunting. Kinlow was looking forward to going home and buying a new truck. Fuller volunteered to deploy to Iraq with the 48th even though it was his third combat mission. And Thomas liked to dress up his pit bull and put him in the side car of his motorcycle as he roared through the streets of Valdosta.
“There was no warning, no visible enemy,” McCorkle said of the deadly blast. “We can take comfort that they are in a much better place. Now they are serving the Army of God.”
Then it was platoon leader 1st Lt. Joseph Latella’s turn to speak. Sunday evening, when the bad news first got back to Latella, he had thrust his fist into a wall. On Thursday, the 24-year-old recent college graduate from Dahlonega held it together â€â€? until he began talking.
“The bonds you make with a soldier will simply not let you be the leader the books tell you to be,” Latella said, choking over his words. “I miss them. I love them like brothers and they are unforgotten,” he said.
The word “brothers” surfaced throughout the evening, in every speech, in every conversation. Sobbing soldiers hugged and comforted one another the best they knew how. It was a moment to put soldiering aside and share their grief.
“I lost four good friends and we’ll never get them back,” said Staff Sgt. William Taylor of Valdosta. “I want to say they died for a good cause, trying to help the Iraqi people get their freedom. Right now there are no words to really describe how I’m really feeling.”
Among the line of 2nd platoon soldiers who formed behind the stage to shake hands was an Iraqi man named Ali, whose last name can not be revealed because of possible retribution. He served as interpreter for Alpha Company and stood in line with the soldiers as though he were one of them � a brother.
“He was a great man,” said Ali, wiping back tears as he spoke about Fuller, whom he had come to know well since the 48th arrived in Iraq. “He was my best friend. He was all the time so loving.”
The four Alpha Company soldiers were on patrol Sunday on Route Aeros, a dangerous east-west road in the southwestern section of the Iraqi capital. They were in the last Humvee in a three-vehicle patrol.
They had just passed a traffic control point when the improvised explosive devise exploded.
“It was the loudest noise I’ve ever heard,” said Sgt. William Rousseau of Milledgeville, who was in the lead Humvee. “My first response was to make sure my crew was OK. Then I went down to the middle vehicle to check on them. I was proceeding to the third vehicle, but it wasn’t there.”
Rousseau said he had been particularly close to the jovial Fuller. They went to the chow hall together, worked out in the gym and watched movies.
“I miss him. If I was having a bad day, he would pick me up,” Rousseau said. “If he was having a bad day …,” said Rousseau, pausing. “Well, he didn’t have a bad day.”
Doing the dish in the desert
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Bita Honarvar/AJC
Cpl. Bryan Kemp and an Iraqi contractor install a dish on the soldier’s tent Wednesday.
Camp Striker, Iraq — Cpl. Bryan Kemp doesn’t really get to use his computer skills on the job with the 48th Brigade Combat Team. He’s officially a supply clerk with Headquarters and Headquarters Company who has been assigned to fixing weapons here at Camp Striker.
But Kemp did manage to put his talents to use for personal gain.
The former Microsoft employee from Seattle, who once owned and operated an Internet service provider, hooked up with an Iraqi Internet contractor to install his personal satellite dish.
We’re talking enormous dish erected over a smallish canvas tent surrounded by sandbags.
“Not having communication was driving me nuts,” said Kemp who wants Internet access to chat with his wife back home in Macon.
The Internet cafe at Camp Striker was pretty good but the long waits and hours were limiting. He couldn’t always talk with his wife when she was free.
Kemp rounded up 20 other soldiers who each paid $180 for the hookup. On Wednesday, the Iraqi contractor was perched high on Kemp’s tent roof installing the enormous dish when a soldier walked by with this comment: “You said you were getting a satellite. I didn’t know you were doing this kind of [stuff].”
James Kinlow: ‘Almost as if he knew what was going to happen’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thomson â€â€? Daphanie Kinlow’s eyes rimmed with tears as she looked at the sheets of notebook paper folded neatly in her lap. It was her husband’s handwriting.
Sgt. James Kinlow
Seven months before, she recalled, he had summoned her and their two children into the bedroom. “Daddy wants to show y’all something,” he said.
Her husband was a member of the Georgia Army National Guard and was about to be mobilized for duty in Iraq. Ever the practical father, he had written out his own obituary and wanted to talk about final arrangements in case he didn’t come home.
“If two men in military uniforms ever come looking for you,” he warned his wife, “I’m gone. I’m dead.”
On Monday morning, they came.
Daphanie Kinlow was standing at a fax machine in the McDuffie County school offices, where she works as payroll manager, when two men in Army dress uniforms walked up and asked if they could speak to her privately.
Her husband, Sgt. James O. Kinlow, a 35-year-old truck driver in civilian life, had been killed the night before by a bomb as he drove a Humvee on patrol outside Baghdad.
Daphanie felt a sickening sense of déjàvu as she remembered that day when her husband gathered the family for a talk that upset her and their children, 15-year-old Chauncey and 10-year-old Chelsea.
“It was almost as if he knew what was going to happen,” she said Wednesday, as she sat in the living room of their tidy brick home in this east Georgia town near Augusta. She was surrounded by relatives, friends and co-workers â€â€? so many of them at times that some of the young ones had to sit on the shag carpet.
An image of her husband in desert fatigues stared out from a computer screen on one side of the room. He looked younger than his years. On the other side of the room, T.D. Jakes preached from a muted TV. Daphanie noticed the religious program and smiled. “I gave James his [Jakes’] latest book for his last birthday.”
‘We sort of grew up together’
It was a scene of grief and remembrance that has played out across Georgia this week as families in Thomson, Sylvester, Valdosta and Covington learned that their soldiers had become the first deaths from enemy action in the yearlong deployment of the guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team.
In this case, it was like a death in two towns. The Kinlows live in Thomson, but were raised up the road in Lincolnton, where James and Daphanie met at Lincoln County High.
“He was real skinny, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to date someone that scrawny,” Daphanie said with a laugh. But they were soon inseparable. “He was my best friend. He liked to dance and he liked to joke around. We sort of grew up together.”
They called each other “Bay,” short for Baby.
James Kinlow graduated from high school in 1988 and joined the Guard the following year. He enjoyed the part-time duty and planned to stay in until he qualified for a military retirement. When he found out he was being deployed to Iraq late last year, his parents were alarmed.
Carrie Kinlow, the slight woman sitting at the breakfast table, was opposed to the war and let her son know that she didn’t like him having any part in it. His father, Chester Kinlow, a retired custodian at the county courthouse, didn’t like it any better.
But Daphanie decided that her feelings about the conflict were irrelevant once her husband was involved.
“I felt like, right or wrong, I had to support my soldier,” she said, opening an album of photos James sent her from Iraq. One showed him posing in front of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle that he drove and nicknamed Daphanie. Another showed him in a Humvee with some of the soldiers who died Sunday night.
“I told him that things over there weren’t as bad as the news made it seem,” said Daphanie’s brother, Dave Ferguson, who served in Iraq as an Army supply sergeant during the early days of the war. “But I guess things are different now. We weren’t playing defense then.”
Blanketed with love
After she learned of her husband’s death, Daphanie said, she wanted to go home and crawl under the covers. Instead, her family and community blanketed her and her children with love and concern.
As she put away the photos, the back door flew open and a voice announced, “Coming in!” It was Daphanie’s mother, Gladys Ferguson, trailed by a procession of kinfolk bringing food and cartons of canned drinks.
Then there was a knock at the front door. A co-worker of Daphanie’s, Jamie Sikes, had arrived with plates of carry-out Chinese for lunch.
“Now, the middle school’s got your meals tomorrow, and the high school’s got your meals Friday,” she told her friend. “Your family is definitely not going to go hungry.”
The Kinlow children have a wide circle of friends, too. Chelsea is a gifted program student at Norris Elementary School. Chauncey plays football and basketball at Thomson High. When he found out about his father’s death after football practice Monday, his mother said, he vowed to quit the team because his No. 1 fan wouldn’t be there to watch him.
That afternoon, 30 of his teammates showed up at the house, still sweaty from practice, and told Chauncey that they were part of his family, too.
“They were smelling and everything,” his mother said, grinning and dabbing her eyes with tissue at the same time. “There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. They were so sweet.”
Chauncey was still in bed Wednesday when his defensive line coach, Rodney Garvin, showed up at the door wanting to speak with him.
Daphanie told him to go on back. “And get on him about what shape his room is in.”
Garvin reappeared a few minutes later and told her that Chauncey should take all the time he needed, but it might do him some good to come back and be with his teammates. “We’ll say a prayer for him again tonight.”
Daphanie’s cellphone rang. It was someone wanting to know about funeral arrangements.
She learned Wednesday that the body will return home this week and that her husband had been given a posthumous promotion from specialist to sergeant. She wants to hold services as soon as possible � probably this weekend, perhaps Saturday.
The funeral will be at First Baptist Church in Lincolnton, with pallbearers from the National Guard and Kinlow’s Masonic lodge, and flowerbearers from the Lincoln County High School Class of 1988.
Everything, she said, will be just as he wanted it on that day when he called his family into the bedroom to talk. Most of the details are right there in his own handwriting.
