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Friday, April 28, 2006
Baby Noor soldiers honored
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Georgia Commission on the Holocaust on Friday honored the Gainesville-based infantry company that rescued Noor al-Zahra, the Iraqi baby born with spina bifida.
Soldiers of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment, returned from a yearlong deployment in Iraq a week ago. They were recognized for their humanitarian efforts at a noon ceremony at the Capitol.
“It was not their military mission,” said Sylvia Wygoda, commission chairman emeritus. “It was their mission as human beings.”
Charlie Company soldiers discovered tiny Noor last December during a raid of the baby’s family home in impoverished Abu Ghraib.
The soldiers won worldwide acclaim for helping shuttle Noor out of Iraq for critically needed medical care. The baby underwent surgery in Atlanta and is receiving follow-up treatment.
Wygoda said the Holocaust Commission honors a variety of individuals and organizations for their humanitarian deeds. Past winners include WSB anchor Monica Kaufmann and writer Pat Conroy.
Maj. Gen. David B. Poythress, commander of the Georgia National Guard, said some might find “ironic” that a Jewish organization was giving the award to the 48th Brigade Combat Team soldiers.
He said not too many of the soldiers were Jewish and the baby they rescued was a Muslim.
Poythress said the award celebrated America’s pluralism.
Commission Chairman Michael Altman said he felt the award for Charlie Company was “very appropriate.” He quoted a poem written by a Holocaust survivor that reads: “To save one life is to save a generation.”
“You’ve got to start somewhere,” Altman said of baby Noor’s rescue. “This showed the compassion we as Americans have.”
Eight soldiers, the two top officers and those who were present during the initial raid into Noor’s home, were singled out for individual awards. They were Capt. Anthony Fournier, first lieutenants Billy Chau, Jeff Moran, and Jeff Morgan, 1st Sgt. Bobby Mayfield, Sgt. 1st Class Michael Sonen, Staff Sgt. Archer Ford and Sgt. Nicholas Jelks.
Sonen commented that the soldiers felt it was the right thing to do to get Noor the treatment she needed to correct her birth defect.
The entire company also received a plaque that will hang in the armory in Gainesville.
Changes sought for handling of war dead
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Washington — Concerned over the mishandling of a Georgia soldier’s body last year, the state’s two U.S. senators on Thursday introduced a measure that would require the Pentagon to reevaluate the way it treats military war dead and their families back home.
Sen. Saxby Chambliss and Sen. Johnny Isakson, both Republicans, submitted the call for a comprehensive review of the military mortuary process as an amendment to the must-pass emergency budget bill needed to fund the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. The Senate had not voted on the amendment as of late Thursday.
Meanwhile, Rep. Phil Gingrey, a Republican from Marietta, pushed for legislation on the House side that would force more immediate changes, possibly including creating war-zone mortuaries that would more quickly prepare soldiers’ bodies for burial back home.
Chambliss and Isakson said they were prompted to act after the body of Paul Saylor, a 21-year-old Georgia National Guardsman, was returned home to Bremen last August so badly decomposed that his family was unable to hold an open-casket viewing, although Saylor had died just three days earlier. A member of the 48th Brigade Combat Team, Saylor was killed Aug. 15 when his Humvee rolled into a canal.
“Our family feels that the viewing would have provided closure and given us a chance to say our final goodbye to our hero,” the Saylor family says on a Web site, soldiersplea.com. They call for a mortuary facility to be built in the Middle East so soldiers’ bodies can be embalmed before they are flown home.
“The unimaginable grief and sorrow that a family experiences when their soldier makes the ultimate sacrifice should not be made even more distressing by not allowing the family an opportunity to say their final goodbye,” Chambliss, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said as he introduced the amendment.
Under current Pentagon procedures, Saylor’s body was packed in ice in Iraq and flown to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where autopsies are performed and bodies are embalmed.
But the ice melted in the Iraqi heat and Saylor’s body lay in water so long that it was decomposing when it arrived.
The Chambliss-Isakson amendment would have the Pentagon evaluate the feasibility of setting up autopsy and embalming operations within a war zone.
It also calls for an evaluation of the way the military notifies the families of soldiers killed in war and would provide a way for families to get updated information, if they desire.
Chambliss said information provided to families now is often incomplete or inaccurate.
“I am grateful to the Saylor family for bringing this to our attention,” Isakson said. “And I hope this measure will help ensure the treatment of a fallen soldier is the absolute best our nation can provide.”
