Fatal Inaction

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Fatal Inaction
The world's most powerful military failed to provide the armor that would have saved scores of American lives. One father would like to know why.

Williams didn't ask his questions aloud. "I was a private," recalls Williams, now a clerk at a Blockbuster Video in Washington state. "I wasn't supposed to ask questions."

The convoy rolled away from the safe house into the dark. There were 14 men among the three vehicles. Kilbride, one of at least four members of his extended family to graduate from West Point, rode in the lead Humvee. His second in command, 1st Lt. David Bernstein, 24, was in the last Humvee with Williams and Hart. Spec. Joshua Sams, 20, was at the wheel. Bernstein was valedictorian of his suburban Philadelphia high school. He graduated fifth in his class at West Point. He was so fit and gung-ho about physical training that his men affectionately called him Super Dave behind his back. Everyone liked Super Dave. He was known for listening to the concerns of his men and trying to help. "I respected him not because he was an officer but because of who he was as a person," Sams says.

It was pitch-black as the convoy followed a back road through open agricultural fields. Sitting on makeshift benches in the open back bed of the Humvee the two privates were not just exposed -- their only protection some Kevlar blankets draped over the benches -- they couldn't see much. Roughly 33 yards to the right, a large earthen berm paralleled the road. Up ahead, the road took a 90-degree turn to the left, and the berm turned with it.

It was about 9:15 p.m. when six to eight insurgents, dug in along the berm, opened fire on the convoy with rocket-propelled grenades, medium machine guns and AK-47 assault rifles, according to combatant interviews and available military documents. Kilbride's Humvee sped through the left turn in the road and kept going. It was standard procedure for ambushed convoys to speed through the kill zone, then regroup down the road for possible counterattack.

As the second Humvee accelerated, a chaplain who'd been hitching a ride back to base when the convoy mission changed took cover, lying flat on the floor; a soldier used the clergyman's back as a firing platform to steady his light machine gun. The third Humvee was taking the brunt of the enemy attack. Sams killed the headlights and hit the gas. He crouched low and leaned as far as he could out the open left side of the Humvee -- away from the enemy fire -- while still driving more than 50 miles an hour. Sams saw Bernstein next to him firing at the insurgents with his M4 rifle, he says. Behind him, he heard Hart open fire, too.

In the back bed of the Humvee next to Hart, Williams says, he believed his rifle had jammed. So he "went for cover," trying to shield himself behind the Kevlar blankets. "I was waiting to die," he says. He heard Hart's machine gun fall silent, then felt him drop to the floor of the Humvee beside him. He yelled at Hart to keep firing. Hart didn't answer or move. "That's when I knew he was dead," Williams says.

At the wheel, Sams recalls, he maneuvered to avoid being blown up by a rocket-propelled grenade that missed the Humvee by a yard and a half. Instead of following the left turn in the road, Sams drove straight onto a field. As the Humvee hurtled forward, Sams fell out the left side opening where a door should have been. As he tumbled, his armored vest snagged on the front left wheel well. He was dragged, still conscious, 25 yards, until the driverless Humvee struck the berm, then rolled backward, pinning Sams's left arm beneath the wheel.

Silence. Deep silence. Nobody was firing, Sams recalls. Not his guys. Not the other guys. The rest of the convoy was long gone. Sams wondered if anyone else was alive in his Humvee. He wondered if he was alone out there.

Sams tried to pull his arm free. It wouldn't budge. He swung his legs around, placed both feet in the wheel well and pushed, trying to lift the 1 1/4-ton vehicle off his arm. No go. Sams rolled on to his side and stretched out his legs, testing to see if he could reach one foot inside the Humvee and hit the gas. "Stuff you basically know you can't do," Sams recalls. "I was trying to save my arm."

Desperate, Sams called out in the dark that his arm was pinned and he needed someone to drive the Humvee off him. A lone figure appeared around the back of the Humvee. It was too dark for Sams to make out who it was. Maybe an insurgent, in which case he was dead. Sams watched the large silent figure lurch around the truck, struggle to climb in the driver's side opening, fail and fall down. Again, the figure tried to climb into the Humvee, and again he fell. Four times he tried and fell, Sams recalls. On the fifth attempt, the figure climbed into the driver's seat and reversed the Humvee off Sams's arm. Then the man collapsed and tumbled out of the Humvee onto the dirt field.

Sams tried to stand to go to his rescuer but fell forward; that's when he realized he had broken his ankle. He fell close enough to his rescuer to recognize him at last. It was Bernstein: Super Dave. "I asked him where he was hit," Sams recalls. "He said, 'My leg.'" Sams, who had taken a 2 1/2-day course in basic combat first aid, patted Bernstein's left leg until he felt dampness. "I found his entrance and exit wound," Sams says. "My fingers went in as I was patting him up." The insurgents' machine-gun fire had easily pierced the thin skin of their unarmored vehicle and struck Bernstein above the left knee.

Sams, like most soldiers, kept field dressings, gauze pads with strings attached, tucked in the webbing of his armored vest. He tied the dressing around Bernstein's leg. "That's when it dawned on me I have two privates in the back of the vehicle I haven't heard a word from," Sams recalls.