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.
NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
NY Times OP-ED COLUMNIST
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.
NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
NY Times OP-ED COLUMNIST
