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AFTER THE WAR: INQUIRY

AFTER THE WAR: INQUIRY; Report Says Errors and Fatigue Led to Ambush of Convoy

By Eric Schmitt

• July 10, 2003

An Army inquiry into the ambush of a supply convoy in southern Iraq in March has found that exhaustion, a set of wrong turns and poor communications contributed to the deaths of 11 Americans and the capture of Pfc. Jessica Lynch and six other soldiers.

The fierce attack on members of the 507th Maintenance Company on March 23 -- the third full day of the war -- capped the deadliest day of combat and exposed the vulnerabilities of military supply lines that stretched from Kuwait hundreds of miles north into Iraq.

Iraqi video footage of the American dead and wounded from the ambush seized the nation's attention and, for the first time in the war, prompted public concern over the Pentagon's handling of the conflict.

Investigators determined that Private Lynch suffered several injuries when a rocket-propelled grenade hit the Humvee she was traveling in, causing it to crash into another vehicle in their convoy at about 45 miles per hour. Earlier accounts incorrectly said that she had emptied her rifle fighting off Iraqis before being stabbed and shot.

The 15-page executive summary is also notable for what it does not say. It recommends no disciplinary action against any of the soldiers, most of whom were stationed at Fort Bliss, in El Paso, Tex. Nor does it address the question whether the Iraqis mistreated or executed any American prisoners, which is the subject of a separate inquiry.

Instead, the report is a straightforward narrative of what went wrong for the 33 soldiers in the 18-vehicle convoy that became separated from the main Army column rolling north and inadvertently drove into disaster in Nasiriya, a city on the banks of Euphrates River.

The inquiry's findings were first reported today in The Oregonian and The Washington Times. A copy of the executive summary was posted later today on The El Paso Times Web site, and was verified by Army officials. The Army is scheduled to release the findings on Thursday.

The report gives the following account of what happened. The 507th Maintenance Company's convoy fell behind the Third Infantry Division's 600-vehicle column rumbling north through the harsh Iraqi desert.

Rushing to catch up, the convoy's commander, Capt. Troy Kent King, made a fateful mistake as his unit approached the outskirts of Nasiriya, a city of 300,000 people about 180 miles southeast of Baghdad.

At an intersection south of the city, Captain King misunderstood the route, missed a turn and led the convoy straight into the city.

Communications immediately became a problem. Five vehicles in the convoy were equipped with radios but the soldiers in the other 13 had hand-held radios with batteries that had gone dead during the long ride.

The soldiers saw armed civilians and what appeared to be armed Iraqi soldiers at two checkpoints, but none of those people fired at or threatened the troops. Indeed, some Iraqi soldiers waved at the convoy which, still unaware it was driving deeper into hostile territory, rumbled on.

Only a couple of miles later did Captain King realize his original mistake and order the vehicles, which included several heavy trucks and refuelers, to reverse course.

At that point, small-arms fire greeted the Americans at every turn. The company's senior enlisted soldier, First Sgt. Robert Dowdy, worked frantically to organize a retreat. Although the soldiers had completed basic training, they were mostly cooks, mechanics and other support personnel who had no combat experience. Many of their rifles jammed during the fight, apparently from the dusty conditions.

The convoy soon became dispersed, with vehicles trying to speed away from the increasingly ferocious enemy fire, doubling back, and missing yet more turns in the dust and confusion.

It was in this chaos that a speeding Humvee carrying Private Lynch; Sergeant Dowdy; his driver, Pfc. Lori Ann Piestewa; and two other soldiers was hit by the rocket-propelled grenade and crashed into a stationary tractor-trailer rig.

Sergeant Dowdy died at the scene. Private Piestewa survived the crash, but was seriously injured and died later in Iraqi custody. Private Lynch also suffered major injuries in the crash, and was rescued 10 days later from an Iraqi hospital by American commandos.

Altogether, the incident lasted between 60 and 90 minutes. ''They fought the best they could until there was no longer a means to resist,'' the report concluded.

March 23, 2003: 2 dead, 8 missing, 5 POW: 507th Maintenance Company from Fort Bliss ambushed

On March 23, 2003, the 507th Maintenance Company from Fort Bliss got lost in the Iraqi desert and stumbled into an ambush. Over the next three weeks, El Pasoans went through a variety of emotions as the fate of the soldiers became known.

Information was foggy in the initial days, but as time passed, it became clear that the toll was awful. Nine members of the 507th were killed. Iraqi forces captured six.

One of those captured, Jessica Lynch of West Virginia, was freed after nine days of captivity. The bodies of the fallen returned for somber funerals across the country, including two in El Paso.

On Palm Sunday, three weeks after their capture, Marines liberated the five remaining POWs from Fort Bliss. They returned home a few days later to a raucous welcome.

Five prisoners of war and eight missing

Originally published in the El Paso Times on March 27, 2003.

The Pentagon on Wednesday identified two 507th Maintenance Company soldiers from Fort Bliss who were killed in action, but they did not say how they died. Military officials also released the names and status of 13 other soldiers from the same unit who were attacked Sunday -- five prisoners of war and eight who are missing.

Fort Bliss officials on Wednesday said an additional four soldiers from the 507th were wounded and under U.S. medical care. They gave only one of those four soldiers' names.

Pentagon officials say the prisoners thought to have been executed are among the eight listed as missing. Final determinations that they are dead and how they were killed can happen only once the bodies are located, officials said.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said he "heard reports that some of these prisoners have been shot outright."

Soldiers not killed in gunbattle

House Armed Services Committee members, who receive daily briefings on the war, said they are convinced the dead soldiers were not killed in a gunbattle.

"It was very apparent to me that a number of our soldiers had been shot in the head, and it seemed to be at close range," said U.S. Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., a committee member.

U.S. military officials said the soldiers were ambushed by Iraqis when they took a wrong turn near An Nasiriyah in Iraq.

But the maintenance soldiers were lightly armed and should have been escorted by a combat unit, said U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-El Paso, who said he's asked the Pentagon for a detailed explanation of what went wrong.

Some of the soldiers who were captured identified themselves as members of the 507th in an Iraqi television video that was shown worldwide Sunday on television and the Internet.

Video shows soldiers with bullet wounds

Some footage, which was broadcast by Arab TV network Al-Jazeera, showed several U.S. soldiers with bullet wounds to the head. Iraqis allege they were shot during a skirmish.

Paul Oliver, father-in-law of Spc. James Kiehl, 22, of Comfort, Texas, who is missing, said he is aware of reports that some of the soldiers were executed.

"We have heard that some of them were killed while they were trying to surrender, and that makes me mad," said Oliver, of Des Moines, Iowa. "They shouldn't put that out unless they can confirm it."

Pfc. Lori Piestewa, 22, of Tuba City, Ariz., is another 507th member who is reported missing. Her family referred questions to Hopi Tribe spokeswoman Vanessa Charles.

Charles said that Piestewa's family members are aware of news reports about the alleged executions but that the members are praying those reports are false.

"All we know officially is that she is missing, so we are hoping and praying that she turns up well. ... That's what we are believing," Charles said.

Red Cross not been granted access

Pentagon officials said Wednesday that the International Committee of the Red Cross still had not been granted access to the five Army soldiers captured Sunday and the two Army helicopter pilots from Fort Hood, Texas, captured a day later.

U.S. officials said shooting or wounding soldiers when they surrender is a violation of the Geneva Conventions, and could be prosecuted as a war crime.

"Some of the biggest losses we've taken are due to Iraqis committing serious violations of the law of armed conflict in the Geneva Conventions by dressing as civilians, by luring us into surrender situations then opening fire on our troops," Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday at a news briefing at the Pentagon. Transcripts of the briefings are posted on the Department of Defense Web site.

"To the families of those captured or missing, know that our thoughts and prayers are with you and with your loved ones and that we will do everything in our power to bring them safely home," Meyers said.

Nine soldiers who gave their lives:

• Spc. Jamaal R. Addison, 22, of Roswell, Ga.
• Master Sgt. Robert J. Dowdy, 38, of Cleveland.
• Pvt. Ruben Estrella Soto, 18, of El Paso.
• Pfc. Howard Johnson II, 21, of Mobile, Ala.
• Spc. James M. Kiehl, 22, of Comfort, Texas.
• CWO Johnny Villarea Mata, 35, of Pecos, Texas.
• Pfc. Lori Piestewa, 23, of Tuba City, Ariz.
• Pvt. Brandon Sloan, 19, of Bedford Heights, Ohio.
• Sgt. Donald Waters, 33, of Kansas City, Mo.

Six soldiers who were captured:

• Spc. Edgar Hernandez of Mission, Texas.
• Spc. Joseph Hudson of Alamogordo.
• Spc. Shoshana Johnson of El Paso.
• Pfc. Jessica Lynch of Palestine, W. Va.
• Pfc. Patrick Miller of Wichita, Kan.
• Sgt. James Riley of Pennsauken, N.J.
• Five other members of the 507th were wounded but not captured that day -- Sgt. Curtis Campbell, Cpl. Francis Carista, Spc. James Grubb, Staff Sgt. Tarik Jackson and Cpl. Damien Luten.

More 507th articles:

More: Bliss soldiers showed heroism during ambush

More: Battle heroes of Fort Bliss' 507th Maintenance Company remembered

More: Brigade commander recalls 507th horror

More: Ambush still haunts former Iraq War POW Shoshana Johnson

More: Memorial unveiled for fallen soldiers of 507th

More: U.S. Army report on 507th attack

More: Importance of training at Fort Bliss is 507 legacy

Trish Long may be reached at [email protected] or 915-546-6179.

Army Describes What Went Wrong for Jessica Lynch’s Unit

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The U.S. Army unit that included Pfc. Jessica Lynch was ambushed by Iraqi soldiers in March after the Americans, exhausted and isolated, became lost in the city of Nasiriyah with guns that jammed, radios that malfunctioned and heavy trucks that sank into soft sand and marshland, the Army has concluded.

A 15-page report from Headquarters, Department of the Army, also clears up what happened to Lynch, a 19-year-old soldier from rural West Virginia who became the face of American heroism and grit in the war against the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Although news accounts at first suggested that Lynch was wounded as she bravely tried to shoot her way out of the ambush, the Army now believes that she was “severely injured” only after the Humvee in which she was riding was hit by gunfire and then slammed into a stalled tractor-trailer.

The Times obtained a copy of the report Wednesday. The document is to be formally released today.

Both inside and outside the government, the Iraq war has been described as a textbook example of superior planning and precise execution. But the incident on the morning of March 23 involving the 507th Maintenance Company continues to haunt the U.S. military, particularly as families of the 11 soldiers killed and nine wounded demand answers and accountability for what the report called the “tragic results” of error.

The Army hopes that the report will help sort out fact from fiction concerning those fateful 60 to 90 minutes of combat. And the report stresses that the 33 soldiers, despite their commander’s navigational mistake and the breakdown of weapons and equipment, conducted themselves admirably.

“Soldiers fight as they are trained to fight,” the report says. “Once engaged in battle, the soldiers of the 507th Maintenance Company fought hard.

“They fought the best they could until there was no longer a means to resist. They defeated ambushes, overcame hastily prepared enemy obstacles, defended one another, provided life-saving aid and inflicted casualties on the enemy.”

The 507th, based at Ft. Bliss, Texas, was not a combat unit; its members included cooks, mechanics, technicians and clerks. On March 21, the company crossed into Iraq from Kuwait as part of a convoy supporting a Patriot missile battalion. Early into the deployment, the company’s commander, Capt. Troy King, misread his assigned route, the report says.

According to the Army findings, King relied primarily on his global positioning system device and an annotated map on which he had highlighted “Route Blue.” King “believed in error that Blue was his assigned route,” the report says.

King could not be reached for comment Wednesday. A spokeswoman at Ft. Bliss said he was on routine leave.

As the convoy sped north, the 507th, with 18 vehicles, “bogged down in the soft sand,” the report says. “Drivers from many units became confused due to the darkness, causing some vehicles to separate from their march columns.” And the route King chose, the report says, “proved to be extremely difficult, over rough terrain.”

The company lagged behind the rest of the convoy. Time was lost repairing vehicles. Soldiers who had not slept for at least two days were tired and hot as they approached the marshy outskirts of Nasiriyah on March 23.

Seeing what they thought was an industrial complex or an oil refinery, they became further disoriented and missed another series of turns. The batteries in their hand-held radios died.

King and other soldiers noticed armed Iraqi soldiers at two checkpoints. Some Iraqis waved to the Americans.

The report says the Iraqis, including civilians who drove by in trucks with mounted machine guns, at first showed “no hostile intent.”

Members of the 507th were trained to hold fire unless they felt threatened, and they had been advised to expect “happy fire” -- shots fired in celebration of freedom.

Finally King, crossing the Euphrates River on his way out of Nasiriyah, realized that he was off Route Blue. He set up a security perimeter, and soldiers were ordered to “be vigilant” and to “lock and load” their weapons.

King hoped that a series of turns retracing the 507th’s path through the city would get the company back on track. But a 10-ton truck ran out of fuel. Then the company was hit by sporadic small-arms fire.

King ordered the company to hurry along, but in the “speed and confusion” it missed another turn. A 5-ton tractor-trailer broke down. Its driver was picked up while a passenger, Sgt. Donald Walters, apparently “fought his way” toward a canal and “was killed in action.”

“The circumstances of his death cannot be conclusively determined by available information,” the report says.

King then split the company into three groups, according to the Army investigation.

The six soldiers in Group 1, which included King, fought their way south through the city. Iraqis tried to block their exit with vehicles and debris.

“Most of the soldiers in this group report that they experienced weapons malfunctions,” the Army says. “These malfunctions may have resulted from inadequate individual maintenance in a desert environment.”

But they made it out and soon joined a Marine Corps tank battalion.

Ten soldiers were in Group 2. One of them, Cpl. Damien Luten, “attempted to return fire with the 507th’s only .50-caliber machine gun but the weapon failed,” the report says. “Luten was wounded in the leg while reaching for his M-16.”

Small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades burst around them. Their escape route also was blocked. Five soldiers were wounded, including Spc. James Grubb, who “returned fire with his M-16 until wounded in both arms, despite reported jamming of his weapon.”

Marines also rescued Group 2.

In Group 3, a Humvee carrying five soldiers, including Lynch, was “hit by direct or indirect fire and crashed at a high rate of speed into the rear of the stopped tractor-trailer.”

The driver of the Humvee, 1st Sgt. Robert Dowdy, “was killed on impact.” Pfc. Lori Ann Piestewa “survived the crash but was seriously injured and died in captivity.” The deaths of two other passengers, Sgt. George Buggs and Pfc. Edward Anguiano, “remain under investigation.”

Lynch was “seriously injured and captured.” Now being treated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, she has no recollection of the incident, her doctors have said.

This group of 17 soldiers took additional casualties, among them Pvt. Brandon Sloan, who “was killed by enemy fire before his vehicle came to a stop.” Chief Warrant Officer Johnny Villareal Mata “was killed, having sustained multiple wounds.”

Two more vehicles were destroyed and four more soldiers lost, including Pfc. Howard Johnson Jr.

His father, the Rev. Howard Johnson Sr., pastor of the Truevine Missionary Baptist Church near Mobile, Ala., said Wednesday that the Army had briefed him on the findings.

“They offered all kinds of sympathies,” he said. “They were polite, they were very thorough in their presentation, and I think they did a good job.

“I’m pleased to know my son died a hero, and I’m proud of him for that. Still, that doesn’t bring Howard back, though he will linger long in my memory, as long as I’m alive.”

Johnson, who opposed the war, believes that the military should punish some of its own for what happened and that the families should be compensated in some way.

“If you don’t punish anybody,” he said, “I don’t know how the Army can take control of situations like this in the future.”

The Army’s inability to definitively state what happened to her son Donald rankles Arlene Walters, who wonders if he was left in the desert to die.

She said an Army autopsy showed that he had been shot twice in the back and once in the leg and stabbed several times in the abdomen.

“We’ve sat down and dissected every sentence of this report,” she said in a telephone interview from her home in Salem, Ore.

Walters has read accounts by Iraqi officials who described an American fighting bravely during the ambush. She wants to know if that courageous soldier was her 33-year-old son.

The Army report “doesn’t really give me closure. I’m not sure I’ll ever have that,” Walters said.

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Fate of private raises questions about how unit was ambushed

FORT BLISS, Texas (CNN) -- February 17, 2003, was deployment day for the 507th Maintenance Company of Fort Bliss, Texas. Soldiers heading for a potential combat area in the Persian Gulf checked their equipment and posed for family pictures.

Pfc. Lori Piestewa of Tuba City, Arizona, was among those saying goodbye. A 22-year-old Hopi from the Navajo Reservation, the daughter of a Vietnam veteran and granddaughter of a World War II veteran, Piestewa took a few minutes to share some last-minute thoughts with a local television station.

"I am ready to go," she said to the camera. "I learned to work with people. It's very important to me to know that my family is going to be taken care of."

As of Monday and almost six weeks after she said goodbye to her family, Piestewa was one of eight soldiers from the 507th Maintenance Company listed as missing in action.

Two members of the company are confirmed dead. And as of Monday, five other members were being held as prisoners of war.

The U.S. military blames a wrong turn as their convoy approached the southern Iraq city of Nasiriya on Sunday, March 23, just days into the war.

The battles around Nasiriya have been fierce, some of the most intense fighting yet in the war.

According to several U.S. sources, a six-truck convoy was helping re-supply and support frontline troops. The convoy was supposed to be operating in a secured area.

The trucks started crossing a bridge and were ambushed by what is described as an irregular Iraqi force, according to the Pentagon.

Rep. Silvestre Reyes sits on the House Armed Services Committee. The Democrat from El Paso, near Fort Bliss, believes the convoy was overwhelmed.

"There is no doubt in my mind that when this maintenance group, that was lightly armed with sidearms and light weapons, came up against two Iraqi tanks with heavy automatic weapons, they were clearly outgunned," Reyes said.

"Because the supply lines are over 200 miles long and there are pockets of Iraqi military all along this route, we can't afford to assume it's a secured area."

Army Spc. Shoshana Johnson, 30, is a cook in the 507th Maintenance Company. The single mother of a 2-year-old daughter is now a POW.

Her father, Claude Johnson, a retired Army sergeant who fought in the 1991 Gulf War, never imagined she would ever be close to the front lines.

"When you're coming up from behind, there's supposed to be people that set checkpoints and so on and so forth along the way. What happened?" he asked. "Did they miss a checkpoint, they make a wrong turn? Where's the breakdown?"

Most of what happened in the ensuing fight is still unknown. Marines from the 1st Expeditionary Force moved in, rescued one wounded soldier and retrieved the bodies of two others, the Pentagon said.

Iraqi television showed video footage of the bodies of at least five other soldiers, who had bullet wounds to their foreheads. Reyes said the images will eventually prove the Iraqis have committed war crimes.

"It's pretty disgusting," Reyes said. "I think the people that have seen it know exactly what an atrocity has been committed against our soldiers and the violations that have been perpetrated by the regime are going to be very evident."

The Pentagon is still investigating how and why part of the 507th Maintenance Company drove into what it calls an ambush.

Military officials aren't talking about specifics yet, especially since the lives of five POWs and eight soldiers missing in action are still on the line.

UNSUNG HEROES: The Soldier Who Destroyed An Enemy Mortar Position With A Jammed M-16

The March 23, 2003, ambush of 507th Maintenance Company in Nasiriyah, Iraq, was both a military and public relations disaster....

By Corey Adwar | Published Jun 18, 2015 9:11 PM EDT

The March 23, 2003, ambush of 507th Maintenance Company in Nasiriyah, Iraq, was both a military and public relations disaster. Of 31 soldiers who made a wrong turn into the city during the chaos of the invasion, accompanied by two soldiers belonging to the Army’s 3rd Forward Support Battalion, 11 were killed, seven captured, and nine wounded, according to the U.S. Army’s official report of the ambush . Pfc. Jessica Lynch, initially hailed as a hero by the Bush administration and the news media, testified before Congress that she lost consciousness early in the attack and never actually fired a shot.

The real hero of the ambush fought back as long as he could with a jammed gun and no support. Even after his capture, he prevented the enemy from obtaining sensitive papers that would have jeopardized more American lives, according to an account by Tom Bowman of the Baltimore Sun .

When the American convoy made its fateful navigational error, 23-year-old Army welder Pfc. Patrick Miller was driving a five-ton wrecker truck with Sgt. James Riley in the passenger seat.

Soon after the ambush began, Miller pulled alongside a disabled tractor trailer to help rescue marooned occupant Pfc. Brandon Sloan. Miller “executed a combat pick-up of Sloan while moving and under fire,” reads a portion of the Army’s official investigative report on the ambush. Sloan’s passenger, Sgt. Donald Walters, was already missing and later determined to have been killed in action under unknown circumstances.

Ducking low over the dashboard, Miller pushed his truck forward as bullets impacted it from all sides. One bullet shattered Miller’s sideview mirror as he tried to adjust it, then another struck Sloan in the forehead, killing him instantly.

Miller pressed his vehicle forward for as long as he could. Scanning his surroundings, he was afforded terrifying views of RPG-toting Iraqis setting up mortars, and more with AK-47s arriving to the ambush site in white taxis.

Finally, his bullet-riddled truck, with a damaged transmission, came to a stop just across a bridge spanning the Euphrates River. Miller and Riley disembarked and ran ahead to another bloody scene: A tractor-trailer had veered off the road, and a Humvee crammed with five more soldiers had rear-ended the bigger truck at high speed.

Miller and Riley took one look at the heap of twisted metal and bodies and thought all the Humvee’s occupants, including Lynch, were dead. The pair moved on to help their two wounded comrades inside the cab of the tractor-trailer.

Riley gathered his surviving subordinates and search unsuccessfully for an M-16 rifle that wasn’t jammed. The Army’s investigative report of the battle blamed the jammed weapons on dusty conditions and poor maintenance.

But instead of taking cover with the others, Miller ran through a gauntlet of fire toward an Iraqi dump truck, hoping to capture it and drive his fellow soldiers to safety. Along the way, Miller spotted a group of Iraqis 50 feet away from him setting up a mortar tube. His assault rifle was partially jammed as well. He realized he could fire one round at a time by continuously slapping his palm into a lever on the side of the weapon that slid each round into place.

Taking cover behind a berm, Miller used this painful technique to shoot seven Iraqis one by one, as they attempted to launch mortars at his trapped comrades. Riley witnessed Miller repeatedly pop up from behind cover to fire at the Iraqi position, making each enemy pay with his life for trying to drop a mortar round into the tube. Spc. Edgar Hernandez also recalled Miller’s lone charge, hearing his single shots stand out against the bursts of the Iraqi fire.

Unlike Miller, the Iraqis’ fully functioning weapons always missed. “The only thing I was thinking was if they don't get a mortar loaded, they can't blow them up,” said Miller, whose palm was bruised from manually forcing each bullet into position before firing.

When the mortar position had fallen silent, Miller caught sight of an armed man using two women as a shield. He shot the combatant and sent the two women running away.

“PFC Miller moved beyond the crash site, engaged the enemy, and was captured after being surrounded,” states the Army’s official report. “Although unconfirmed, Miller may have killed as many as nine Iraqi combatants.”

But moments later, more than two dozen armed Iraqis in civilian clothes overwhelmed Miller, who dropped his M-16 and put up his hands.

After his captors roughed him up and argued about whether or not to kill him, they delivered Miller to uniformed Iraqi military officers, who found a slip of paper in his helmet containing his battalion’s secret radio frequencies for medical evacuations and other emergencies.

Thinking fast, Miller told his captors they were prices for power steering pumps. He watched as the officers threw the valuable piece of paper into a fire.

In a reversal of roles, Miller tortured his captors during his three weeks as a prisoner of war — by singing Toby Keith’s patriotic country song “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue” until even his fellow prisoners couldn’t stand it. The guards shouted for him to shut up everytime he sang, which was often. “He sang it all the time,” fellow prisoner of war, Spc. Shoshana Johnson, told The Baltimore Sun.

The Army believes Miller killed as many as nine enemy fighters to protect his trapped, wounded, and outgunned comrades. But after his deployment, Miller focused his memory on nine entirely different men and women, by erecting a framed photo in his living room with portraits of the nine members of his company killed in the ambush.

For his actions, Miller was the only member of his unit to receive the Silver Star.

He's one of my heroes,” Spc. Johnson told The Baltimore Sun. “His actions may have saved my life.”

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Real Story of Jessica Lynch's Convoy

June 17 -- It became known as the "Wrong Way Convoy," a hapless group of American mechanics, clerks and computer technicians who were waylaid in an unexpected firefight early in the war with Iraq. Eleven soldiers would die while others — including Pfc. Jessica Lynch — would be taken captive. One question persists: who was responsible for the mix up?

• Read the Army's executive summary of what happened to the 507th Maintenance Company.

A still-classified Army report has concluded that at a checkpoint, vehicles from the 507th Maintenance Ordnance Company were accidentally sent in the wrong direction — and straight into a harrowing ambush.

It was March 23, the fifth day of fighting, and before the sun set, it would go down as the deadliest day for U.S. forces during the war. Lynch, the 19-year-old supply clerk from Palestine, W.Va., would end up being taken captive — not after a gun battle as early reports suggested, but after a devastating Humvee accident as the driver tried to get away from Iraqi fire.

"When I look back on that day, I can see the trouble we were headed for from miles away. Minute by minute, hour by hour, it was obvious it would end that way," one soldier who was part of the convoy told ABCNEWS.

Heading Into Iraq

Sometime after midnight on Friday, March 21, a convoy of vehicles of the 507th set off into Iraq in support of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division. It was a dark night, on the cusp of the last quarter of the moon's monthly phase. The 507th was part of an almost inconceivably long convoy that included thousands of military vehicles that snaked across the border and followed Iraq's Route 1 northwest from Kuwait. The route passed south of the city of Nasiriyah and then turned almost 90 degrees north, skirting the western suburbs of town.

There was a late-night briefing at Camp Virginia in Kuwait, the 507th's temporary headquarters, just before departure. The soldiers were told that they would be heading into Iraq and instructed to maintain a tactical interval between vehicles — usually 1 ½ lengths — in case of trouble.

The lead vehicle was a Humvee carrying the company commander, Capt. Troy Kent King. It was equipped with a "Plugger," the Army's precision lightweight global positioning receiver, and a "SINGARS" radio, a standard single-channel, jam-resistant, VHF radio. Other vehicles, those with ranking enlisted men, also carried VHF radios and GPS devices.

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‘I live a good life.’ Former Iraq War POW Shoshana Johnson content with her ‘new normal’

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Nowadays, Shoshana Johnson is at peace.

Her days are filled with cooking and baking in the kitchen of her Northeast home, reading sultry romance novels by her favorite authors, practicing yoga and holistic healing, and volunteering at her church and with veterans organizations as she works to maintain her “new normal.”

“I live a good life,” she said from Christ the Savior Catholic Church, where she is a lector. “I’m retired. I’m just enjoying being here. I’m comfortable enough. I think being able to give of myself and my time is better than trying to go out and work for a dollar.”

An unassuming daughter from a military family, Johnson has come a long way after gaining unwanted fame 20 years ago as the first U.S. black female prisoner of war. She was among the members of the Army’s 507th Maintenance Company from Fort Bliss who were killed, wounded and captured after a nearly 90-minute firefight in Nasiriyah, Iraq, on March 23, 2003.

Anxiety still interrupts her inner peace, however, especially during springtime, the anniversary of the ambush. 

“(This) time period is kind of a trigger for me,” said Johnson, who medically retired in 2003.

The former Army specialist schedules more therapy sessions and takes prescribed antidepressants to cope with her memories of the ambush and the aftermath, where nine of her 507th comrades died, and she and five others from her company were injured. In all, eight members of the 507th were captured. 

The POWs, including Johnson, were held for 22 days before members of the Marines’ Delta Company, 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, rescued them in Samarra, Iraq.

The onetime Army cook, who just turned 50, said her life today is much different from what she thought it was going to be like growing up.

Going green

Johnson, a native of Panama, was 5 years old when she emigrated to the United States with her parents, Claude and Eunice Johnson. Her father joined the Army, which meant the family changed addresses every few years to accommodate his career. 

The Johnsons eventually settled in El Paso and grew by two more daughters. Shoshana Johnson graduated in 1991 from El Paso’s Andress High School, where she participated in Junior ROTC.

She enrolled at the University of Texas at El Paso, but lacked focus and dropped out. After working a few part-time jobs, she decided to pursue her passion for baking and joined the Army as a cook to pay for culinary school. 

While at her first duty station in Colorado, she gave birth to her daughter, Janelle. When it came time to re-enlist, she told her Army career counselor that she would do so if she were stationed at Fort Bliss, the military post in El Paso, so her daughter could be near her grandparents and other family and friends. The Army obliged, and Johnson was assigned to the 507 th Maintenance Company.

The 507th deployed to Kuwait on Feb. 20, 2003, as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. It was a support unit for a Patriot air defense missile battalion within the 31st Air Defense Artillery Brigade. Its 82 members included clerks, cooks, drivers, medics, mechanics and technicians.

Within a month, on March 20, 2003, U.S. forces entered southern Iraq and moved quickly into the country, according to an Army after-action report, “Attack on the 507th Maintenance Company 23 March 2003 An Nasiriyah, Iraq,” Elements of the 507th brought up the rear of a 600-vehicle convoy.

By the third day, there were problems.

Some of the company’s vehicles had fallen behind and were off course due to confusion and miscommunication. Also, several of the five-ton vehicles had mechanical problems or got bogged down in soft sand. At this point, the soldiers were sleep deprived, had limited contact with convoy leaders due to dying radio batteries, and were running low on fuel.

Because of human error, 18 of the company’s vehicles (including two that were being towed) mistakenly drove into Nasiriyah, an unsecured city about 225 miles southeast of Baghdad.  

The attack and captivity

As the convoy tried to get back on course, Iraqi combatants began to shoot at the vehicles from all sides. The U.S. soldiers returned fire, but at some point their rifles and machine guns malfunctioned, possibly because of inadequate maintenance in a desert environment. 

Because of their efforts to get out of Nasiriyah, the spaces between the vehicles created three separate groups. Johnson was part of the last group made up of 16 soldiers, including two from the 3rd Forward Support Battalion from Fort Stewart, Georgia, who were traveling in four heavy vehicles and a Humvee.

Of those 16, nine died during the attack. Pfc. Lori Ann Piestawa was injured in the attack and died in captivity. Six of the eight soldiers captured during the assault were injured. Sgt. Donald Walters, whose vehicle was disabled earlier in the conflict with a different group, was wounded during the firefight, captured and executed by his captors, according to the Army report.

The POWs, who shared stories of various levels of mistreatment, were rescued by a Marine contingent on April 13, 2003.

The report stated that after the five-ton tractor trailer where Johnson was a passenger was stopped, Sgt. James Riley told Johnson and the vehicle’s driver, Spc. Edgar Hernandez, to get out of the vehicle and take cover underneath it. Johnson said that when she was halfway under the vehicle, she felt a bullet tear through her left ankle and then, she believes, proceed to her right ankle.

 “It all happened so fast,” she said.

She said Riley pulled her the rest of the way under the truck, before trying to return fire, but all of their M-16s malfunctioned. With no way to counter-attack and with Hernandez shot in the arm, Riley decided their best course was to surrender. 

Johnson wrote a book about her life and Army experience, “I’m Still Standing: From Captive U.S. Soldier to Free Citizen – My Journey Home,” with M.L. Doyle, which Simon & Schuster published in 2010.

In her book, Johnson wrote that her captors moved her and the other POWs every few days. She relied on her Catholic faith while in captivity. She said that she got lots of little signals from God that she would be OK. For example, she survived the ambush with bullets whizzing by her head and rocket-propelled grenades being launched in her direction.

“We made it through so many tight squeezes, a lot of close calls,” she said during her interview. “You say thank you, Lord.”

She also took comfort in a vivid dream she had while imprisoned. It was of her and her mother and sisters eating and shopping in El Paso. She took that as a sign that she would be going home.

As scared as she was during the entire ordeal, she also was in constant pain from her injuries. She said Iraqi doctors operated on her ankles, but she was concerned that the wounds would become infected because there was no follow-up care. Today, she feels blessed that she still has her feet.

When asked how she was able to walk during her rescue as depicted in the iconic photo of her following two Marines to a waiting chopper, she gave one word: “Determination.”

Recovery and relapses

She said her POW experience made her more aware of her blessings, including a loving and supportive family. She appreciated their candor to help her realize that she needed mental health therapy.

Johnson said no one can understand exactly what she went through because her captors separated her from her fellow soldiers at times, so her experience was hers alone. She said she is lucky to have family members with military backgrounds, but acknowledged that their empathy could only go so far.

“There are times when I feel very isolated (because) there’s no one that can really understand,” she said.

Up until the COVID-19 pandemic, she said some of the former 507th POWs would try to schedule their annual medical checkups at the same time at the Robert E. Mitchell Center for Prisoner of War Studies in Pensacola, Florida. The researchers at the center have studied the physical, mental and emotional effects of the trauma military members endure going back to the Vietnam War.

“It’s good to see that everybody is doing OK,” said Johnson, who planned to schedule an appointment at the Mitchell Center soon because she appreciated the thoroughness of the physicians and therapists who have diagnosed things over the years that have enhanced her quality of life.

Despite the help from the Mitchell Center, the VA and her family, the bad memories of Iraq sometimes would consume her.

Johnson said that she has been hospitalized three times for suicidal thoughts from April 2008 through September 2017. The last two happened around national POW/MIA Day that falls on the third Friday in September. She said the recollection of the ambush and her captivity were too much at those times.

“The one in 2008 was right after all the hoopla on March 23 … and I started going downhill,” Johnson said.

Today she sustains her positive new normal through a combination of exercise and mental and emotional maintenance, to include local and out-of-town speaking engagements.

The new normal

Johnson said her life these days includes VA appointments, volunteer work with her church and different veterans’ organizations, and spending time with immediate and extended family who mostly live within blocks of her Northeast home. They include her parents; her daughter, Janelle, a junior business marketing major at the University of Texas Permian Basin; her dog, Popeye, a 17-year-old Maltipoo; and her sisters, one a retired Army officer who teaches at El Paso Community College and runs a massage business, and the other a professor at Texas Woman’s University in Denton.

Physically, she admits to good and bad days.

She has traumatic arthritis in her neck, back, ankles and elbows that doctors attribute to the beating she took as a POW, and regular Army wear-and-tear. She credits her mobility to a fitness regime that includes workouts at a small gym near Chapin High School, and a holistic health approach that includes yoga classes. She said that her workouts can be painful, but they get easier the more she does them.

Johnson said she continues to visit her VA therapists to maintain a positive mental and emotional attitude. She lauded the VA staffers who have treated her long enough to reach out when they sense something is off with her.

Her recovery took a giant step forward after she realized that she did not have to base her future on other peoples’ values and expectations. She is content with her schedule that includes speaking engagements – up to five during a busy month – that ramp up around Veterans Day in November and Black History Month in February.

She controls her calendar to limit her stress.

A reason to speak

She has become more selective about her speaking engagements and favors those where she can make a difference, such as presentations at academic institutions and to groups interested about veterans and their needs. While she appears comfortable speaking in front of crowds, she admits that these engagements still make her nervous, but they also are cathartic.

Sometimes she wonders why she survived the Iraqi ordeal while many in her company did not, and the best answer is so she can share her experiences and perspectives as a POW, a military veteran and a female soldier.

“It’s not easy talking about some of these things and sharing about myself,” she said. “But sometimes when you give people information you can see the light bulb go on over their heads because it’s something they’ve never thought of or heard before. Sometimes I think that is why I came home. Maybe my purpose is to enlighten and influence how they go on with their lives.”

She remembered a chance meeting with a woman after a speech she gave in Florida prior to the pandemic. The woman, possibly a high school student in 2003, watched on television as Johnson returned injured from Iraq, and that made the woman more aware of all the other wounded soldiers. As a result, the woman became a nurse.

“That made me feel good to think that the limelight was there, but it influenced somebody to help others,” Johnson said.

As a volunteer, she has served on various Veterans Affairs advisory committees at the national level, helped service organizations provide morning refreshments at the local VA, and assisted the local chapter of the Military Order of the Purple Heart, which supports Purple Heart Elementary School in the Socorro Independent School District. She also accommodates area schools that request her as a speaker. 

And she cooks once per month at her American Legion Post 832, 2400 Bassett Ave., in Central El Paso.

“I give back when I can,” Johnson said.

Since Operation Iraqi Freedom, she has earned two associate degrees from El Paso Community College, including one in culinary arts in 2011. She mostly uses those skills at home, especially to make her special brownies for family, friends and church socials. She also will whip up fancier fare such as croquembouche (a pyramid of cream puffs topped with caramelized sugar) for special occasions.

She has taken a few nutrition courses at UTEP, but is not ready to commit to pursuing a bachelor’s degree.

When not baking or cooking, she fills her leisure time with romance novels by Twyla Turner and Christine Gray to get away from the crime, conflict and drama that the media usually covers, she said. She continues to work on a cookbook with her niece, Ella Johnson, a freshman at EPCC. The two continue to organize and refine the recipes and their backstories. Her more immediate plans include going on a religious pilgrimage to Greece, Turkey and Italy later this year.

Despite the difficulty of her ordeal and her recovery, Johnson said she is eternally grateful to El Pasoans who have helped her during the past 20 years. She thanked those who respected her family’s privacy when she was a POW. She shared her appreciation for law enforcement who sheltered her parents’ home and her daughter’s day care center from unwanted publicity.

“El Paso has been my support through these 20 years, and it’s very much appreciated,” she said.

Changes to Army training

What Johnson and the other members of the 507th experienced in Nasiriyah did not surprise   some Army officers, according to an April 1, 2004, article in Government Executive magazine. If anything, they were surprised that such incidents did not happen more often during the conflict. There was agreement that the system needed to be upgraded … and fast.

Army officials blamed the 507th ambush on inadequate training, insufficient equipment, exhaustion and human error. The service immediately reordered priorities and revamped its training curriculum to include instilling a warrior’s spirit in all soldiers regardless of where their units are deployed on a battlefield.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld brought former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker out of retirement in summer 2003 to oversee an enhanced standard training guide for all soldiers.

The changes included equipping every soldier with the best body armor, weapons and communication equipment. After the Nasiriyah ambush, combat and support units with deployment orders to Iraq received more physical training to build muscle and endurance, and tactical training on how to use their weapons, land navigation, map reading, first-aid training and nuclear, biological and chemical training.

The Army has continued that more rigorous combat training for all units that could be sent into battle, said Maj. Gen. James Isenhower III, commander of Fort Bliss and the 1st Armored Division.

For example, Fort Bliss units offer combat training for Reserve and National Guard units preparing for possible deployment.

“And that’s been governed largely by a commitment to never let something like that happen again in terms of the ambush with that unit,” Isenhower said in a briefing with El Paso media on Tuesday. 

Retired Army Maj. Gen. Heidi V. Brown, who commanded the 31st ADA Brigade during Operation Iraqi Freedom, recalled the immediate changes that were made to soldier training and access to resources in part because of what happened to the 507th.

An El Paso native who served at Fort Bliss several times during a 35-year career, Brown said the Army’s training upgrades were based on hard learned lessons in tactics and doctrine during the Iraq war.

The retired officer completed her service in 2017 as director of global operations for U.S. Strategic Command at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, and lives in Locust Grove, Virginia. She said there is a lot more technology used on today’s battlefields, such as drones and robots, but there still is a need for soldiers who are well trained and well equipped.

“We always said, it takes boots on the ground to hold ground,” said Brown, who wears a metallic bracelet that honors those members of the 507th who were killed in action. “You can have whatever you want flying … but at the end of the day, if you’re going to hold ground, you do that on the ground.”

The Army’s Combat Studies Institute created a virtual “staff ride” of the 507 th ’s experience in Nasiriyah to allow others to study tactics and learn lessons and insights to plan, train and execute small unit maneuvers.

The Army redesignated the 507th twice before it disbanded the unit on July 16, 2005.

Daniel Perez

Daniel Perez covers higher education for El Paso Matters, in partnership with Open Campus. He has written on military and higher education issues in El Paso for more than 30 years. More by Daniel Perez

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by Daniel Perez, El Paso Matters March 23, 2023

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