Ex-POW Jessica Lynch not the only hero of 507th

By Eric Slater
Los Angeles Times

FORT CARSON. Colo. — As former POW Jessica Lynch prepares for the release later this month of her $1 million memoir, the airing of her first TV interview, and a TV movie about the attack on the Army's 507th Maintenance Company, the soldier considered by many to be the 507th's greatest hero enjoys more modest rewards.

After three weeks in captivity Army Pfc. Patrick Miller, 23, of Park City, Kan., and other soldiers from the 507th Maintenance Company were rescued by U.S. Marines. Pfc. Jessica Lynch was rescued separately. Advertiser library photo • April 13, 2003

To Topeka for a parade, to Las Vegas for the Academy of Country Music Awards, to Florida soon, he hopes, and Alaska.

At sunrise on the morning of March 23, the vehicles and soldiers of the 507th were being torn apart.

Miller set out alone to wreak havoc on a contingent of Iraqis who were trying to lob mortars on several of the soldiers. The Army says Miller "may have killed as many as nine Iraqi combatants."

With an aversion to bragging, the Kansan has no doubt about what he did or did not do, how many he killed or wounded: "Seven in the mortar pit, one in the tree line, and I ran over one guy."

If it wasn't for his actions during the ambush, which earned Miller one of the military's highest awards, the Silver Star, several soldiers feel certain they would not have survived.

"We were all down, most of us wounded, and I looked up and saw Miller running by, bullets and rockets everywhere," recalled former POW Spc. Shoshana Johnson, 30. "I said, 'Miller, get down!' He said, 'I gotta go, I gotta return fire' ... I tell you, Miller, ol' country boy, saved us."

As Lynch, whose rescue from an Iraqi hospital became one of the most dramatic stories of the war, readies for her media blitz, most of her fellow soldiers caught in the ambush have returned to their jobs: cooking, supplying radar parts and toilet paper, fixing broken axles.

They are back making $25,000 or $29,000 a year, some struggling with wounds, memories of imprisonment, and of seeing their friends killed. Eleven soldiers died in the battle, five captured and nine wounded.

Few from the 507th seem to resent the diminutive Lynch's fame and fortune. Separated from the other POWs and badly injured when her Humvee crashed, "Jessica is a hero in every way. Tiny little thing, she survived all that by herself. It's amazing," Johnson said.

The Pentagon and media botched Lynch's story, erroneously reporting that she fought to her last bullet despite gunshot and stab wounds, when in fact she was likely unconscious and probably did not fire a shot, investigators say.

The 18 vehicles and 31 soldiers of the 507th — plus two soldiers from another unit — passed through a dark and quiet Nasiriyah about 5 a.m. The convoy took a now well-known wrong turn. Meanwhile, Iraqi irregular and Fedayeen Saddam fighters prepared an ambush, according to Army investigators and members of the 507th.

At about 7 a.m., as many as 200 Iraqis began firing on the 33 Americans with AK-47s, heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. The 507th had a single heavy machine gun, a .50-caliber, which failed immediately.

The convoy broke into three groups, according to the Army investigative report. The first fought its way through the ambush and sped toward nearby Marine Task Force Tarawa, which organized a rescue mission.

In the second group, all five vehicles were quickly riddled with bullet holes and torn apart by rockets, and five of the 10 soldiers were wounded. They would eventually be rescued by the Marines.

At the end of the convoy, the third group was also being devastated by the attackers. Within minutes, several soldiers were dead, with more to die shortly. Lynch was injured — fellow soldiers thought she was dead — after the Humvee she was riding in was hit by an explosive.

Miller was driving a military tow truck when the ambush began, with Sgt. James Riley, 31, in the passenger's seat. The two stopped to pick up Sgt. Donald Walters, 33, and Pvt. Brandon Sloan, whose truck had become stuck in the sand. Under heavy fire, Sloan climbed aboard. Walters disappeared and was later killed. Miller stomped on the throttle.

Moments later, the truck, riddled with bullet holes, began to slow and the three were preparing to jump out when Sloan was shot in the forehead and died instantly. Miller and Riley took off running toward the vehicles of Lynch, Johnson and others. Riley dived behind a truck and took command of several soldiers, most of them wounded. Miller kept running.

The reason, he said, was that he saw an Iraqi dump-truck just on the other side of the highway. He figured he could get the truck running and spirit them away.

As he neared, Miller dropped to his belly and crept up a sand berm. Peeking over the top, he saw the mortar pit right beside the dump truck. And he began his effort to pin down the Iraqi mortar men.

As an Iraqi went to drop a round into the mortar tube, Miller fired and the man fell, he said. His M-16, however, jammed, and for the next hour, Miller would pop up, fire one round, and then drop back behind the berm to manually reload another.

"They didn't realize where the fire was coming from," Miller said. "They just saw their guys fall every time they'd try to set up the mortar."

After nearly an hour of pinning down the men around the mortar, according to investigators, Miller decided it was time to check his back. He swept around, he said, and fired on an Iraqi approaching along a tree line. "That was the last guy I shot."

When he turned back around, Miller said, numerous Iraqi fighters were closing on him. He threw his rifle as far as he could and raised his hands in the air. "I said, 'OK, you win.' I kind of figured they'd shoot me right there, though."

About the same time, Riley, commanding the soldiers that the Iraqis had been trying to kill with the mortar, decided it was time to give up. None of their weapons were working and most of them were wounded. He, too, raised his arms and stepped into the open.

The Iraqis quickly took the Americans prisoner.

The Iraqis wanted to know about Miller's can of Skoal tobacco.

"I told 'em my chew was candy. Two or three of them opened it up and started eating. Idiots," he said with a roll of his eyes. "They saw their breakfasts again."

Over the next three weeks, the Iraqis moved their POWs to seven different locations. In each cell he was kept, Miller carved the name of his wife, Jessa, and two children, Tyler, 4, and Makenzie, 15 months.

Early on an April morning, in a house the POWs would later learn was just outside Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, a door flew open and a voice in English commanded everyone to get down. Marines swarmed the room. "If you're an American," one Marine shouted, "stand up."

The POWs were headed home.

Miller has been transferred over the summer to Fort Carlson at the base of Pike's Peak. He moved his family into a small home on the post. He doesn't talk much about what happened.

"It doesn't bother me if I don't think about," Miller said. "So I don't think about it much."