The Silence Speaks Volumes at Roll Call for U.S. Infantry Unit

BAGHDAD —  They called the roll for the 2nd Brigade on Saturday morning.

Command Sgt. Maj. Otis Smith cried out, “Sgt. 1st Class Marshall,” but no answer came.

“Sgt. 1st Class John Marshall.”

No answer came.

“Sgt. 1st Class John W. Marshall.”

No answer came.

And on it went at Saddam Hussein’s parade ground. The names of seven more soldiers were called. No one answered.

That is the way the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Division remembered its eight men who died on the long march from Kuwait to the parade ground. Their names were spoken. Prayers were said. The brigade’s officers and men bowed their heads, and some of them wept.

The brigade chaplain, Father Patrick Ratigan, repeated the eight names and mentioned a detail from the sum of each man’s life. And after each name he repeated a single word: “sacrifice.”

The helmets of the dead men were perched on the stocks of their M-16s, their ranks still pinned to the tan cloth covers, their names still etched in ink or sewn into the thin Kevlar bands. Their boots stood in a neat row.

Everyone remarked how ironic it was, to have these men memorialized on the very ground where Hussein once reviewed his troops and, notoriously, fired a shotgun with one hand while wearing a black homburg. The parade ground was one of the first sites seized by the 2nd Brigade when it ripped through central Baghdad on the foggy morning of April 7.

Marshall, who grew up in Los Angeles, never made it to Baghdad. He was firing a Mark 19 automatic grenade launcher on an armored personnel vehicle south of the city that day when a rocket-propelled grenade, or RPG, blew his body out of the vehicle. His comrades found him several days later, buried by the enemy in a shallow grave. He died at what the military calls “Objective Curly.”

Afterward, Marshall’s commander spoke to his widow, who found comfort in the fact that her husband had died protecting fellow soldiers, said his friend, Maj. Denton Knapp. Marshall was a scout protecting an important ammunition and fuel resupply convoy that fought its way up Highway 8. He was 50.

The arrival of the convoy at the parade ground the evening of April 7 allowed the brigade to hold its positions overnight. Essentially, it sealed the defeat of the Republican Guard and thus the Hussein regime.

After Marshall’s name was called, the roll call proceeded: “Staff Sgt. Robert A. Stever.”

No reply came.

Stever also died on Highway 8, minutes after Marshall fell, and not far away. An RPG exploded on top of him and blew him back into his Humvee. He was 36.

Stever was not supposed to be in combat. He was a mechanic sent to repair damaged combat vehicles. But he had fired a full can of .50-caliber ammunition, reloading while speeding up the highway, before he was hit.

“Those two guys saved the convoy from being overrun by continuing to fire and exposing themselves to danger,” said their company commander, Capt. Anthony Butler.

Chaplain Stephen Hommel said he was present when Marshall and Stever were hit. “They died instantly,” he said during his invocation. “It’s not a bad way to go.”

The sergeant major called out: “Cpl. Henry L. Brown.”

No reply.

Brown was 22. He taught Sunday school back home in Natchez, Miss. He died of severe burns after a missile tore into the brigade command post south of Baghdad on April 7, just five hours after the armored convoy had pulled out for the capital. He was the brigade commander’s driver, and he died next to his Humvee.

The sergeant major called out: “Spc. George A. Mitchell.”

No reply.

Mitchell was the driver for the brigade’s operations officer. He died instantly from the blast of the missile’s 2,000-pound warhead, which hit a few yards away and spit out an enormous fireball that engulfed much of the command post compound. Seventeen soldiers were wounded.

Two reporters who were having coffee with Mitchell and phoning in their stories also died. Their names -- Julio Anguita Parrado, from Spain; and Christian Liebig, a German -- were read out Saturday, along with that of NBC correspondent David Bloom, who died while accompanying the unit.

The sergeant major called out: “Pvt. Anthony S. Miller.”

Miller was a mechanic. He was standing near a group of signal company trucks when the missile struck. He died instantly. He was 19. He had joined the Army to support his mother.

The sergeant major called out: “Capt. Edward Korn.”

Korn was a “friendly fire” casualty. He walked away from his vehicle during a mission southeast of Baghdad on April 3 and passed between two Iraqi tanks that had been abandoned. Fellow soldiers several hundred yards away spotted movement and mistook Korn for an Iraqi soldier.

An automatic-rifle round fired by an American enlisted man struck Korn in the torso. A 25-millimeter cannon round from a Bradley fighting vehicle, fired by an officer, ripped through him. Minutes later, an enlisted man rushed up to inform the convoy commander: “Korn is in the woods, sir.”

The sergeant major called out: “Staff Sgt. Stevon A. Booker.”

Booker was a tank commander on a “gun run” through southwest Baghdad on April 5, when a convoy of 29 tanks and 14 Bradleys stunned the Republican Guard by penetrating the city for the first time. He was struck in the head by an RPG while firing and talking on the radio, members of his unit said.

The gun run killed at least a thousand Iraqi troops, commanders said. It sent hundreds more fleeing from their positions, paving the way for the conquest of the capital beginning two days later.

The sergeant major called out: “Spc. Brandon Tobler.”

Soldiers at the memorial could not recall the date that Tobler died, but it was soon after the invasion of Iraq began March 20, in a vehicle accident somewhere in south-central Iraq. The chaplain praised Tobler as “a reservist who put his life on hold to come here and serve his country.”

The brigade commander, Col. David Perkins, spoke of the role the eight men had played in routing Hussein’s army.

“There are actually things worth fighting and dying for,” the colonel said. “Freedom is one of them.”

The colonel sat down. A sergeant rose to read Psalm 23, and then a specialist read from the Scriptures.

Spc. Kea Brown sang “Amazing Grace,” her pure voice soaring over Hussein’s reviewing stand and above the two pairs of enormous twin sabers bookending the parade field.

Seven riflemen from Task Force 1-64, Booker’s unit, fired three volleys into the soggy morning air. A lone bugler played taps low and sweet, a tiny figure dwarfed by the tanks and the brigade’s bright flapping colors. Everyone saluted, staring straight ahead at the row of empty helmets and rifles and boots.

The sergeant major stood at attention. Roll call was over.