Accident or ambush? Army widow pursuing truth finds contradictions

Almost every night, Betsy Coffin of Kennebunk, Maine, thinks about that day her husband died on a Baghdad highway in summer 2003.

Army 1st Sgt. Christopher Coffin was riding in a truck that swerved to avoid two Iraqi vehicles. The truck plunged into a deep pit, where a dying Coffin was swarmed by Iraqis who stole his wedding ring. For the widow, more than two years later, the questions aren't settled.

Was it an accident turned ugly, as the Army initially found — and the Department of Defense Inspector General concluded earlier this year in another review? Or was the truck forced off the road by insurgents, as asserted by the truck's driver and three Pacific Northwest soldiers who rushed to the crash site?

"It was flabbergasting to me that they just can't accept what I say," retired Spc. Dan Wight, the truck's driver, said in a recent interview.

In a war that has killed more than 1,900 U.S. soldiers, nearly 1,600 in action, the difference between an accidental death and a combat death might seem insignificant. But the difference consumes Betsy Coffin, because a combat death would mean her husband's sacrifice and the efforts of soldiers who risked their lives to try to save him have never been properly recognized.

The Seattle Times first chronicled Betsy Coffin in April 2004 as she got in touch with Sgt. Dana Kohfeld, a Portland-based Army reservist who gave first aid to the dying Christopher Coffin. Since then, Betsy Coffin has continued to search for answers, reaching out to soldiers who were there that day and pushing for additional Army reviews.

"It's hard to find peace when you don't know what really happened," Coffin said. "I know I may never get the truth, but I also know that if I am to live with myself, I must try everything that I can to try to find it."

As the Iraq war drags on, Betsy Coffin's quest is shared by a growing circle of families unsatisfied with official military accounts of the deaths of their own loved ones. Some hunger for more details to help them through their grief. Others are concerned the official accounts omit information that might cast the military in an unfavorable light.

Brian Hart of Bedford, Mass., for example, has tried for nearly two years to obtain official details about the October 2003 death of son Pfc. John Hart. A letter from a unit commander said John Hart — a gunner on a Humvee — was caught in an ambush and died after exhausting his ammunition. But Brian Hart has heard from other soldiers that his son was sent on patrol with only one-third of the standard ammunition issue for his machine gun.

In a reversal that made national headlines, Army officials first told the family of former professional football player Pat Tillman that he had died in a firefight in Afghanistan in April 2004. The Army later admitted Tillman had been killed by gunfire from his fellow Rangers and not enemy forces.

Army officials said they do help families obtain accurate information, working with them to get autopsy reports and other details. But some investigative documents — due to security concerns — are not released.

"Everyone deals with these things differently," said Maj. Elizabeth Robbins, an Army public-affairs officer. "Typically, fewer than 50 percent of the families request actual autopsy documents and reports."

Betsy Coffin, 43, said her search is an attempt to fulfill a promise she made to her husband in a troubling phone call two weeks before he died.

The Coffins had been together for 25 years, and Betsy's 51-year-old husband, a police officer and Army reservist, called home often during his three months in Iraq.

During that phone call in June 2003, Christopher Coffin was agitated. If anything should happen to him and Army explanations didn't make sense, he wanted his wife to find the truth even if she had to ask Maine's congressional delegation for help.

"It was really out of character for him to say something like that," Betsy Coffin recalled. "And he was really adamant and would not let it go."

A shaken Betsy Coffin didn't ask her husband why he was so worried. She now thinks he was concerned about convoy security.

First Sgt. Coffin was a stickler for preparations and keenly aware of insurgent attacks in Iraq. He believed convoys were too often poorly prepared and understaffed, said retired Spc. Wight, who often rode with Coffin in the 352nd Civil Affairs Command.

"We discussed a lot about convoy procedures, and he thought that anything less than three vehicles, you are just asking to invite trouble," Wight said, in his first public interview. He has spent two years recovering from a broken back and other injuries suffered in the crash that killed Coffin.

On July 1, 2003, the day of the crash, Coffin had unsuccessfully tried to muster a three-vehicle convoy from the short-staffed unit, Wight said. So Coffin and Wight did something they had never done before, Wight said. They ventured out in a two-vehicle convoy.

According to Army reports on the incident, the two-vehicle convoy met the minimum standard for convoys on that highway. But Kohfeld, the reservist from the Portland unit, said her unit required at least four vehicles to travel together.

Coffin rode with Wight. A Humvee with two other soldiers followed as the convoy moved south along a divided highway.

Wight told The Seattle Times that two Iraqi vehicles — a white truck and a Volkswagen bus — darted across the median directly in front of him. Wight said it appeared they were trying to hit his truck, or cut it off.

Wight said he swerved to the right, to the left and lost control. The truck landed upside-down in an 8-foot-deep construction pit in the median, the only such highway hole for miles around.

The two soldiers in the Humvee, identified in investigative reports only as Spc. Orzol and Spc. Williams, stopped to help. But, as Army investigators later concluded, the convoy was "woefully unprepared," lacking radios and an adequate first-aid kit.

The investigators also found the Iraqi crowd was increasingly unruly, putting the soldiers' lives at risk. The initial investigating officer, citing "extreme and hostile conditions," even recommended that the two soldiers — as well as Wight and Coffin — be awarded the Bronze Star, which honors service against an armed enemy, according to a report obtained by Betsy Coffin.

Reinforcements arrived from a nearby convoy organized by the 671st Engineer Company of Portland. They included Sgt. David Biehl of Spokane, 1st Sgt. Perry Burkholder of Tacoma and Sgt. Kohfeld, all of whom told Betsy Coffin that her husband appeared to have died in a trap sprung by insurgents.

Biehl, first on the scene, told The Seattle Times that about 10 Iraqis had climbed into the pit to steal gear from the wounded Wight and Coffin.

Biehl and Kohfeld also said they were subject to AK-47 fire. Then they were startled by explosions as the Humvee from Coffin's convoy burst into flames, setting off ammunition inside. "It was a hostile action," Biehl said. "We were taking fire from the tree line. ... But we never got a thank-you from their unit. Nothing."

Last fall, Kohfeld was called to Washington, D.C., to be interviewed by two Defense Department investigators who, at the prodding of Maine's congressional delegation, were again reviewing Coffin's death.

Kohfeld said she was surprised and angered by the interview. "It was like something out of the movies, they were just flat out trying to second-guess me," Kohfeld said. "They tried every which way to make me say it was an accident, and I said it absolutely was not. They were very aggressive — and very hostile."

The final Defense Department Inspector General's report acknowledged it was "relatively impossible" to determine the intent of the Iraqi drivers who veered toward the convoy because they were never questioned and there were no other witnesses to support Wight's account of the crash.

But in a letter to Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, that accompanied the report, Assistant Inspector General John Crane offered no such hedge. He declared that "witness testimony and later our own inquiry, established that Sgt. Coffin died as a result of a traffic accident, not hostile activity."

Betsy Coffin is left to choose between the official findings, and the statements of four soldiers who were there when her husband died.

She has chosen the soldiers' version. Still, she keeps looking for more answers. "There is nothing in the world that is more important to me than keeping this final promise to my husband," she said.

As I read this article, something about this story didn't ring true ~ it had a sort "cindy sheehan" fell about it. So I did a quick search on Dana Kohfeld and came up with the following article from Seattle Times, April 11, 2004:

Gratitude, grief bond women with Iraq war ties

One woman is a soldier who went to war, the other a widow created by the war.

Both are tormented by the events that played out on a warm summer morning in July along a stretch of Baghdad highway.

The soldier, Dana Kohfeld, is a 36-year-old single mother. When her Army Reserve unit was called up last year, she sent her two boys to live with her mother in Belfair, Wash., and prepared to ship out to Iraq.

The day she cannot forget -- the hardest day in more than eight months of duty -- was July 1, when for the first and last time she encountered 1st Sgt. Chris Coffin of Kennebunk, Maine.

His five-ton flatbed truck had careened off the highway and crashed, landing upside down in a deep pit dug into the median. Coffin was banged up and bloodied. It looked like he had been shot in the leg, according to Kohfeld, who spent the next hour working desperately to keep him alive.

“His eyes got foggier and foggier, but I kept yelling at him to try to keep him with us,” Kohfeld said. “I figured that he can't respond, but he would know I was there.”

Chris Coffin, 51, never made it home.

He is one of more than 550 U.S. soldiers who have died in Iraq. For the families left to mourn, the grief is compounded by the uncertainties that surround the death of a loved one in a distant war.

The Army told Betsy Coffin her husband died in a traffic accident. There was no evidence, officials said, that he had been shot. But the details surrounding his death remain murky enough that Maine's congressional delegation requested additional investigation, and today, the Army's Office of Inspector General continues to look into the matter.

“All I have ever asked for, and all I have ever wanted, is the truth,” Betsy Coffin said from her Maine home.

Kohfeld cannot accept that Chris Coffin's death was unintentional. She thinks his truck was run off the road. That would mean Coffin died from a hostile action, and would qualify him -- posthumously -- for a Purple Heart. But Kohfeld says what is far more important than a medal is finding the truth about the final hours of Coffin's life.

“He served in the military for so many years, and then something like this happened and has not been recognized,” Kohfeld said. “I'm hoping to change that.”

For Kohfeld, the call to war came in January 2003 -- her 14th year in the Army Reserve. Raised in Bellevue with a love of horseback riding and ice skating, Kohfeld signed up as a young woman eager for the challenge of a part-time military career that could also help pay for college.

When Kohfeld was called up, a lot had changed in her life. She had married and divorced and was working in the meat department at a Fred Meyer store in a Portland suburb. She joined the Portland-based 671st Engineer Co.

Her new home was a spartan camp outside Baghdad. As the weeks wore on, it quickly became clear that the city remained a dangerous place. Soldiers faced the risk of rocket-propelled-grenade attacks, small-arms fire and roadside bombs.

The Army ranked security risks along convoy routes as green, amber or red, according to Kohfeld. The route to be traveled on July 1 had been ranked code red, Kohfeld said.

That required at least four armed vehicles to accompany a convoy headed to the Tigris River to drop off some patrol boats, she said.

Kohfeld left her base, Camp Dogwood, about 8 a.m., riding in the lead Humvee. About 40 minutes later, they pulled over to stop traffic at an intersection while the convoy drove through. She noticed an unusual number of pedestrians milling along the road, and that made her uneasy.

Her unease heightened minutes later when an Iraqi man came up to her with news of trouble just a few hundred yards ahead.

Kohfeld and a fellow soldier rushed to the spot where dozens of people had gathered around a pit -- some 8 feet deep and 30 feet long -- dug out of the highway median.

Nearby was a parked Army Humvee and two soldiers who had stopped to investigate. A crackle of nearby gunfire made the soldiers jumpy, and Kohfeld and the others scattered the crowd with warning shots. They walked over to the pit and peered in. An Army truck -- with two soldiers inside -- lay smashed in the bottom.

•

Betsy met Chris Coffin in 1979 when she was an 18-year-old freshman studying psychology at a small New Jersey college. He was a 27-year-old junior whose academic career had been delayed by post-high-school enlistment in the active-duty Army.

Betsy was immediately impressed by this lean young man. They dated, fell in love and stayed together over the next quarter-century as Chris Coffin pursued a career as a park-service ranger and later, a civilian police officer with the Department of Defense.

They were a close-knit couple who savored annual ski vacations to Colorado and the beauty of Maine, where they lived in a condo in the coastal town of Kennebunk.

Coffin was always on the move. He was a civil-affairs officer in the Army Reserve, commuting to monthly training in New Jersey and later Maryland. He had been placed on active duty and served in Kosovo in 2001.

By January 2003, Coffin was planning to retire from the military after 25 years of service. That month, however, his Maryland-based unit, the 352nd Civil Affairs command, was placed on active duty. And under the “stop-loss” rules of the Army Reserve, Coffin was required to head to Iraq.

Throughout their separation, Chris Coffin kept in near-constant touch with Betsy, despite the distance. He made almost-daily calls home as he shuttled back and forth, escorting convoys from Kuwait to Baghdad. On June 30, he made what would be his last call.

“He said he was heading back to Kuwait, and was OK. But he was worried. He said the situation was getting more intense,” Betsy Coffin said. The next day, he left Baghdad, riding in the passenger seat of the truck.

•

Kohfeld had been trained in first aid and had been certified as a “combat lifesaver.” After Coffin was pulled from his wrecked truck, she went to work.

He was bleeding badly from the mouth, so Kohfeld blew air into an open nasal passage. She worked to keep his heart going with chest compressions and helped prepare an IV needle for a leg vein. It was then that she noticed a hole in his pants and what appeared to be a bullet wound in his upper leg.

About 10 minutes after the first aid began, the nearby Humvee burst into flames. As the fire raged, rounds of ammunition stored in the vehicle exploded into the air, Kohfeld said.

Meanwhile, in the pit, the truck's 19-year-old driver was still trapped inside, hanging upside down. “He was really freaked out and yelling, `Don't let them get me. Don't let them get me,' ” Kohfeld recalled.

After breaking the windshield, he was pulled free. About an hour after Kohfeld arrived on scene, a Medevac helicopter touched down. The driver would survive.

As for Coffin, he never spoke through the hour of first aid. Kohfeld believes he had died by the time she left his side.

Later, when Army investigators contacted her, Kohfeld learned more about Coffin.

In the weeks that followed, she replayed the events again and again. Kohfeld was convinced Coffin's truck had been forced into the pit by another vehicle and was surprised to learn that the Army initially concluded that the crash was an accident.

Coffin's family was also troubled by the military's account. And there were other unsettling aspects. He had come home without his wedding ring, which he always wore. His watch was gone as well.

“I wanted to know what happened, because I wanted to know what my husband went through,” Betsy Coffin told Time magazine, which in late July published a profile of her husband. “Was he alone? Was someone he knew with him? Did he suffer in any way?”

•

Last month, Kohfeld returned home to reunite with her mother and two boys, 7 and 9. A world away from Iraq, she savored a return to the routines of school, music lessons, grocery shopping and cleaning house.

Yet her taste for military life endured. By month's end, she had made a quick trip to Fort Lawton in Seattle to re-enlist in the Army Reserve.

But Kohfeld remained bothered by that day in July. She had read the Time magazine article and knew Betsy Coffin wanted to learn more about her husband's death. Moreover, Kohfeld was moved by the couple's devotion to one another. The magazine noted that Chris Coffin, before he left, had pointed out an especially bright star, and told Betsy they could both gaze upon it from two distant lands and thus find each other. “It was a love story between the two,” Kohfeld said.

So this winter, with some assistance from The Seattle Times, Kohfeld was able to find Betsy Coffin, hoping that a talk would help both women heal.

“I wanted to give her some closure, and give me some closure,” Kohfeld said. “I wanted her to know how hard we tried to save him, and keep him with us. It just didn't work out.”

Both women were nervous but opened up to each other during several hours of talk.

For Betsy, it was a tough conversation that once again brought her back to that awful day. Kohfeld confirmed some of what she had heard from other soldiers who were at the pit that day. Other details were new.

She was relieved to have the chance to talk with the woman who shared her husband's last hour.

“Nothing can bring Chris back. But I really believe that we owe him to know as much as possible about what actually happened. My gratitude to Dana is hard to express. How do you begin to say thank you to someone who tries to save your husband's life?”

Kohfeld also gained some relief. She had fretted about how she handled the first aid. Perhaps, somehow, she had done something wrong. Betsy, who had gone over the medical reports, assured her that was not the case.

Sometime later this year, the women plan to talk again -- this time, face to face.

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I find it really telling that in the above article, although Coffin's calls home are discussed, there is NO mention what-so-ever of Christopher Coffin's agitated phone call of June 2003 when he was suppose to have told his wife: "If anything should happen to him and Army explanations didn't make sense, he wanted his wife to find the truth even if she had to ask Maine's congressional delegation for help."

If that call had actually occurred I'd think this widow would have been talking about it from day one!

I could be wrong but my gut says this is another one of those smear the military stories that has been embellished to give it legs!

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