Eleven Rifles: No Promise of Tomorrow

Originally published in No Shit, Here I Am: A Soldier’s Stories of Life During and After the War on Terror

March 11, 2003 Fort Drum, New York
Wheeler-Sack Army Airfield

I sat on the flight line with soldiers in a line behind me. Three UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters lifted off. Rising from the tarmac and dipping their noses, they slid forward leaving us waiting for the next lift. They were transporting infantry soldiers from my unit, Charlie Company, 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry Regi- ment. At that time, we were one of only a few infantry companies in the 10th Mountain Division that had fought in Afghanistan, but we were back at it, training for war.

After 10 or 15 minutes, we started to hear the whop-whop-whop of approaching helicopters. The aircraft came around the end of the hangar and hovered over the tarmac before setting down again. The squad to my left started moving toward the first helicopter. The squad to my right started moving to the helicopter that landed where the third one had taken off from. The second and middle spot on the flight-line remained empty. I watched as the first lift stumbled out of the helicopters, and the door gunners waved the approaching squads away. Once everyone was clear, the birds lifted off again, this time banking sharply to the right and quickly disappearing over the treetops on the other side of the airfield.

Before any of us had an opportunity to figure out what was happening, we were ushered back inside the hangar. We sat for what seemed like hours. There was no information about why we weren’t flying, why we were stuck in the hangar, or what had happened with the other helicopter.

A side door on the building opened, and the senior leaders from our company walked in. One of the platoon sergeants cleared his throat. “Gentlemen, Chalk Two, Lift One has crashed. The wreckage has been located by air, and first-responders are trying to get to the crash site as we speak. The location is difficult to reach by ground, so it is taking longer than we would like. From what we can tell so far, we believe that there is at least one,” he paused and took a deep quivering breath.

I remember thinking, Wow, one of our guys was killed in this crash.

His voice cracked and his chin trembled. He fought back tears as he said the word, “survivor.”

My heart sank. One survivor? I thought.

We all looked around the room. We looked at one another. No one knew what to say. As people continued to look around in silence, I realized that we were all doing the same thing. None of us knew exactly who was on that helicopter. We were all trying to figure out who, of our roughly 150-man company, was missing.

They were:

John Eichenlaub (24)

Josh Harapko (23)

Shawn Mayerscik (22)

Brian Pavolich (25)

Andrew Stevens (20)

Stryder Stoutenburg (18)

Tommy Young (20)

Dimitri Petrov

Edwin Mejia

The four crew members from the aviation unit were:

Christopher E. Britton (27)

Kenneth L. Miller (35)

Barry M. Stephens (20)

Lucas V. Tripp (23)

It was late when we were finally taken back to our unit and released to go home. By then, our wives had heard of an Army helicopter crash, and some knew we’d been flying that day. Word had spread quickly, and many of them were calling each other and our company headquarters desperately trying to get some information about our whereabouts.

When I finally walked through the door of our apartment, Theresa hugged me tightly and started crying. I remember her being so thankful that I wasn’t on that helicopter. She kept asking how I was, and I told her, “I’m fine. I’m just tired and hungry.”

She let go of me and took a step back. “How can you be fine? Guys from your unit just,” her voice trailed off while the troubled look on her face finished her sentence.

Truthfully, I didn’t know how I felt. Numb, I suppose. “It’s a dangerous job,” I said. “People die.”

Since I’d been at Ft. Drum, there had been a few incidents when soldiers had been killed in training. It was usually a situation where a soldier wasn’t careful with a weapon and fired a round accidentally, or someone wasn’t paying close enough attention when loading blanks into magazines. Sometimes, they didn’t notice that they still had a magazine with live rounds in their pouch, or that they had a few live rounds in a mag that they were adding blanks to. Then, they’d go do some sort of force-on-force training with blanks, and mistakenly fire live rounds. It was rare, and they were stupid avoidable mistakes, but they happened sometimes. Being an infantryman is a dangerous job.

I didn’t tell Theresa, then, that my platoon sergeant, Sergeant First Class Grady, had bumped me from the helicopter that crashed just a few minutes before it took off. There were five sergeants set to be on that helicopter, including Sergeant Harapko and me from my platoon. There weren’t any NCOs on the 2nd lift. Sergeant First Class Grady wanted an NCO with the second group. He told us that Sergeant Harapko would fly chalk two, lift one, and I’d take the same helicopter on the second flight. He was close to Josh, and I always suspected that he wished he’d bumped him instead of me from that first lift.

There were two survivors that day, Edwin and Dimitri. Their bodies were badly broken, but they lived.

The rest were gone.

In the days that followed, there were eleven rifles with bayonets stuck in the ground behind eleven pairs of boots. There were eleven sets of dog tags draped on pistol grips, and eleven helmets placed on the butt stocks of those rifles. We watched and saluted through tears as eleven flag-draped caskets were loaded onto a C-130 to be sent home to their eleven heartbroken families.

Throughout my time in the Army. I saw a lot of rifles stuck in the ground: too many. But eleven—eleven rifles side-by-side—for eleven men who died together in service to their country? That is something that will always be with me.

Read more from Jarrod Taylor here.