Soldiers search for missing Ohio reservist in Iraq
Tue, Nov. 01, 2005
Associated Press
SYRACUSE, N.Y. - Members of a U.S. Army unit have been spending their time searching for an Ohio soldier missing in Iraq for more than a year.
To the troops of the Army's 10th Mountain Division, finding Army Reserve Sgt. Keith "Matt" Maupin of Batavia, Ohio, has become a quest that defines their values as soldiers.
"He needs to go home to his family," First Sgt. Joseph Sanford told an Iraq-based reporter for The Post-Standard of Syracuse, N.Y. "And there needs to be closure for his family. Those are the two things we're trying to bring: closure to his family, and a way to send this young man home."
Maupin has been missing since April 9, 2004, when his fuel truck convoy was ambushed by insurgents west of Baghdad after leaving camp. A week later, Arab television network Al-Jazeera released a videotape showing Maupin sitting on the floor surrounded by five masked men holding automatic rifles.
That June, Al-Jazeera released another tape purporting to show a U.S. soldier being shot. But the tape was dark and grainy and showed only the back of the victim's head, and did not show the actual shooting.
The Army ruled it inconclusive, saying it could not determine if the man was Maupin or even if it was an American soldier.
The Army lists Maupin as "missing-captured."
"We will not stop looking," Army spokeswoman Maj. Elizabeth Robbins said Tuesday.
Thirty-two members of the Fort Drum, N.Y.-based unit spent seven hours Saturday inching over terrain, overturning rocks and probing bushes on a stretch of land between two highways in the Abu Ghraib section west of Baghdad.
A tip had suggested that Maupin's body might be there, so they parceled the tract into sections and moved systematically through them. It was the third day of searching the area.
They had dug 45 holes and bagged and tagged 10 items that could hold the answers to Maupin's fate, including a scrap of military clothing. Each will be shipped to a lab for analysis.
"The physical search is the key," said Sanford, 38, a native of Poughkeepsie, N.Y. "It's all hands-on. It's picking up every rock, it's looking under every bush, it's turning over every piece of clothing or trash that we find out there."
Sanford cited the Warrior Ethos, in which a soldier vows never to leave a comrade behind.
"When it all comes down to it, it's about the man on your left and the man on your right," Sanford said. "It's all about protecting their flanks and making sure they get home."
Sgt. Bryan Hatfield, 27, of Oklahoma City, said hope of finding Maupin keeps him searching.
"We may go out there day after day, time after time, scouring the grounds ... then comes that one time, you might find something, and it'll be worth it," Hatfield said. "The hope is always there that, yeah, he could be here. So I'll go and look."
The search was welcome news to Maupin's father, Keith.
"It makes me feel better to know they are looking," he told The Cincinnati Enquirer on Monday night. "I believe they were looking the whole time, but they don't say much, they always say it's classified."
Keith Maupin said his Army contact told him it wasn't yet known if anything found was connected to his son. "But we remain hopeful and pray for the best," he said.
Sanford said he will continue to look for Maupin as long as he is deployed in Iraq.
"I never met Sergeant Maupin, but I've looked at his picture, and I've read the reports about him," Sanford said. "He's got a family. He's got a mother and a father, and they love him, and they want him to come home. His parents haven't given up, and I don't think we have the right to."
http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/13047892.htm
Thu Nov 3, 2005 - 8:32 AM ET
DUBAI (Reuters) - The al Qaeda group in Iraq said on Thursday it shot down a U.S. helicopter in Ramadi on Wednesday, according to an Internet statement.
"Your brothers in the military wing of al Qaeda in Iraq brought down a Super Cobra helicopter in Ramadi with a rocket," said the brief statement issued on a Web site often used by Iraqi insurgents.
Two U.S. Marines were killed when their Super Cobra helicopter crashed around Ramadi west of Baghdad on Wednesday, the U.S. military said.
The cause of the crash was under investigation but witnesses reported it had come under fire from the ground.
U.S. forces have conducted a series of offensives in western Iraq to choke off what they say is a supply route for foreign fighters coming through Syria into Iraq to fuel the insurgency.
© Reuters 2005