LOCAL COMBAT ENGINEER DIES IN IRAQ WHILE HELPING CLEAR ROADS OF MINES
by Mike Tharp
Brian Wood
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On April 15, Sgt. Brian Wood e-mailed his Uncle Mike from Iraq, where he was serving as a sapper with a combat engineer battalion. He wrote:
So it may be a long road ahead, but for the large majority of the Iraqi people, they want us here, and they want us to help them rebuild. That always makes me feel good about being here, actually making a difference in these people’s lives and giving them opportunities they’ve never had.
The next day, Brian Wood was killed in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown, when a mine apparently exploded near his Humvee on the side of Highway 1. He was 21.
Wood, who grew up in Torrance, was with the 9th Engineer Battalion, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, based in Schweinfurt, Germany. Formed in 1917, the battalion fought at the Battle of the Bulge in World War II and in the first Persian Gulf War, leading the 1st Infantry Division through a breach in the desert berms, which led to the liberation of Kuwait.
More recently, Wood and his unit had served in both Bosnia and Kosovo. He was a member of Alpha Company, whose gung-ho motto is: “Sappers, Breach Hell!”
After he died, Battalion Commander LTC Blair Schantz wrote:
Sgt. Wood was the consummate professional; he strove for and achieved excellence in all that he did, both in and out of the Army. Brian was a Division Soldier of the Year finalist, smart, energetic and possessed of unlimited potential. Truly, he was the future of our Army. I looked forward to watching Brian continue to succeed; to achieve rank and to lead and mentor others. And I was confident about the future, knowing the Army we love was going to be in his good and capable hands. He was truly a part of the heart and soul of Alpha Company, and his spirit lives on in the standards he set, the soldiers he mentored, and the lives he touched.
The character traits praised by his commanding officer had been forged in his early years, according to his father, Greg Wood. “He was a guy always concerned about other people, not about himself,” he recalls. “We tried to instill in him a joy and love for his country.”
Brian’s great-grandfather, grandfather, father and three uncles all served in the U.S. military, so it wasn’t much of a surprise when, as a high school sophomore, he decided himself to enter the Army. He signed up as a senior for a delayed-entry program and chose to become a combat engineer. “I tried to talk him out of it,” his father says. “He was doing a pretty dangerous job.”
After basic and advanced individual training at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., Brian was shipped to Germany. He was more than halfway through his four-year hitch when he was killed, scheduled to end his service in August next year.
As a boy Brian was “the quiet guy in the back of the class,” his dad says, “not rambunctious. A voracious learner and reader.” Bookshelves in his room held works of history, geography, politics, physics, philosophy, computer programming, the “Master and Commander” series, a biography of Leonardo da Vinci, a book on the Rosetta Stone.
Brian played nearly all sports, and while not excelling in any of them “he was the kid who didn’t mind what position he played, he was always hustling,” says his father, who was his baseball coach. “He was the guy, when he hit the ball, he ran like a demon, like every one was a home run.” He also was in Cub Scouts and played the trumpet in the Torrance West High School band.
Despite his mild demeanor, in 6th grade Brian showed he was no pushover. He had read several books by Rush Limbaugh given him by his dad, and when his social studies teacher criticized the commentator, “Brian got in a real argument with him,” his dad says.
Any spare time in high school, he devoted to an online game made by Sony called Everquest. Its Web site describes its adventures as taking place “in the twisted lands of a realm where war is persistent and death constant.” Brian played with several others, and even from Iraq “whenever he had a chance,” his dad says he’d play with friends back in the States.
In an essay for the Claremont Institute after Brian’s death, Julie Ann Ponzi, an institute fellow, wrote: “What a teacher he might have been! But what a man he was. What an American he was. We must re-double our efforts to produce more like him and, in so doing, let us learn from his example.”
During his last phone conversation with his father, Brian said: “Dad, we find stuff! It’s out there!”
“He was looking for mines in the middle of the night,” Greg Wood explains. “It wasn’t hidden on the road. It was somewhere off to the side. Brian stepped on a mine. There’s just no way to protect against that.”
Brian’s grandfather served in the Army Counterintelligence Corps during the Occupation of Japan after World War II. Greg Wood says that when his own father left the country, a crowd of Japanese civilians accompanied him to Haneda Airport to thank him for all he’d done for them and to wish him sayonara.
“That was another guy in the family who cared about people,” Greg says softly. “Now he and Brian can take care of each other.”
