"Where I failed -- where we failed -- was that I didn't check back that he [Nott] had made it back to the [command post]," he said in a telephone interview. Young faults the two soldiers on the Bradley for failing to identify the target before firing. "The gunner is supposed to identify the target and the commander is supposed to give the order," he says. "They didn't do that."
In their statements, Sgts. Cramer and Creech said that given all the shooting going on that night, they had to assume the shadowy figures were enemies.
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Maj. Chase concluded that there was plenty of blame to go around that night. He faulted Alpha Troop for "excessive use of warning shots," which "led to the perception that the patrol [led by Nott] was enemy."
Another contributing factor, he said, was a shortage of body armor. Out of 134 soldiers in Alpha Troop, exactly nine had the Army's highest-quality armored vest. Army units throughout Iraq were short of body armor in the first year of the U.S. occupation. Expecting U.S. troops to be welcomed rather than attacked by insurgents, war planners had called for a lighter, swifter force that lacked heavy protective gear. In Balad Ruz, Chase noted, the armored vest shortage forced most soldiers to conduct patrols in lightly armored "chicken vests." That was what Leif Nott was wearing when he died.
The Army's inquiry concluded that Nott's death was a result of communication failures involving jumpy, ill-equipped soldiers. Chase recommended tightening up unit procedures, but no disciplinary action.
Les Nott called the report "a coverup."
"My God, seven people got shot up. Leif is gone. Mickey Anderson will never walk normally again," he said in an emotional phone interview. "And the Iraqis, they were handcuffed. You can't shoot a handcuffed prisoner just because you're in Iraq. It's an army, not a bunch of barbarians."
Les Nott says he has asked Wyoming's congressional delegation to look into his son's death. Anderson, who also told this story to documentary filmmaker Stuart Sugg, has asked the Inspector General of the 4th Infantry Division to reinvestigate.
The Army has not publicly identified Nott as a victim of friendly fire. A spokesman said the Army has a policy of not updating cause of death information in press releases. Central Command has posted on its Web site official reports into three well-publicized friendly fire incidents from the early weeks of the war. But Centcom, which oversees Iraq operations, has not issued a press release containing the words "friendly fire" since April 14, 2003.
Emily Devers, now at Fort Hood, Tex., calls Nott's death "a total accident." She says she understands why the Army has not been candid. Nott's story "will make people think less of what is going on" in Iraq, she said. But Devers, who supports the U.S. role, added, "Everybody needs to know this kind of thing does happen. And it happens more often than you think."
However often it does happen, the official record should reflect how our soldiers died. The truth shouldn't be an internal Pentagon matter or confined to whispers among survivors. A friendly fire death isn't a meaningless death if the knowledge of what happened helps prevent other tragedies. Only then can a family's wounds, and a nation's, start to heal.
Author's e-mail: jeff.morley@wpni.com
Jefferson Morley, a former assistant editor of Outlook, writes a weekly column on the international press for washingtonpost.com.
