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Friday, December 23, 2005
A soldier ‘you never forget’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Dave Hirschman
Staff Sgt. John Mason puts on a protective suit as he prepares to detonate a corpse IED next to an irrigation canal in Mahmudiyah in July.
Staff Sgt. Johnnie Mason wasn’t a member of the 48th Brigade Combat Team, and he was a native of Texas, not Georgia.
But the explosives expert with the quick, Johnny Depp smile and offbeat sense of humor earned the Georgians’ admiration by defusing scores of roadside bombs aimed at them.
Mason was killed Dec. 19 in Mahmudiyah by insurgents who apparently targeted him personally.
Mason had just destroyed a roadside bomb in the dusty, violent town south of Baghdad when someone called his attention to a suspicious-looking trash bag nearby. The tall, gangly 32-year-old career soldier approached it, then turned to his fellows and yelled for them to seek protection in their Humvees. At that moment, the hidden bomb exploded, killing Mason. No one else was hurt.
Mason was scheduled to be home celebrating his daughter’s birthday in Clarksville, Tenn., where he was stationed, the day before he was killed. But the Army kept him in Iraq because of fears of insurgent violence around the time of the Dec. 15 elections.
Mason was married with two children — a daughter, Ashley, and son, Adam.
“He found humor in everything he did,” said Brook Mason, his widow. “He could read technical manuals and wiring diagrams and instantly understand them, and he’d be smiling the whole time. He loved what he did because he knew it saved lives, and he cared about the people around him. He enjoyed his work and thought his job was fun. I supported him because I wanted him to be happy — and he was.”
Mason kept his composure through some of the most ghastly and disturbing situations in Iraq. He defused bombs planted in rotting corpses and animals, knowing all the while that bomb disposal experts were prized targets for insurgents.
He was nearly killed in July when a bomb went off prematurely. The blast temporarily knocked out his hearing, gave him a raging headache and covered him with dirt and grime. But 15 minutes later, he was back on the job at the very same spot, neutralizing deadly artillery shells that hadn’t exploded the first time.
Front-line infantry soldiers, a hard crowd to impress, marveled at Mason’s bravery.
“You are, without a doubt, nuts!” Sgt. Guillermo Thorne of the 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment told Mason admiringly that day.
Mason, a member of the 717th Explosive Ordnance Detachment, kept up a steady banter riding in military vehicles on Iraq’s demolition derby roads, and he frequently prodded drivers to be more aggressive. When his Humvee sideswiped a truck in heavy traffic, Mason clapped the driver on the shoulder approvingly and quipped, “If you ain’t rubbing, you ain’t racing!”
Lt. Col. John King, the 1st Battalion commander, said members of the mortar platoon who worked with Mason regularly have taken his death hard. The battalion left Mahmudiyah in November, but the mortar platoon plans to return for Mason’s memorial service.
“We will miss Johnnie very much,” said King, Doraville’s police chief in civilian life. “He was one of those soldiers you never forget. Mahmudiyah has a way of humbling the best of us. We pay very close attention to the number of soldiers that have been lost there, but when you know the names behind those numbers, that changes you forever.”
