Schofield Barracks loses first soldier in Afghanistan
By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer
Before the military officers at the door of her Gig Harbor, Wash., home said anything Saturday morning, Tina Witkowski knew they had come to tell her that her husband was dead. Schofield Barracks Army Spc. Phillip Witkowski had succumbed to "noncombat injuries" while serving in Afghanistan.
At 23, the mother of two young boys — one 3, the other 3 months — had suddenly become a widow. It seemed unfathomable, even in Afghanistan, which Tina Witkowski and her husband had viewed as safer than the dangerous roads of Iraq.
Army Spc. Phillip Witkowski
He had been there a week. He was 24, the first soldier from Schofield Barracks to die in Afghanistan.
Witkowski was one of four Schofield soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan over the weekend.
Two Schofield soldiers were killed Saturday when their convoy came under attack in Al Amarah, Iraq.
Staff Sgt. Oscar D. Vargas-Medina, 32, of Chicago, and Spc. Ramon C. Ojeda, 22, of Ramona, Calif., were assigned to the Army's 84th Engineer Battalion, 25th Infantry Division (Light).
As of yesterday, the Army had yet to release details about their death.
But on Sunday, The Associated Press reported Shiite militiamen attacked a U.S. convoy with small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades near the southern city of Amarah, 180 miles south of Baghdad. Two soldiers were killed, the military said. Through the night and into Sunday morning, Iraqis set fire to the long line of abandoned vehicles, jumping on the hoods and beating them with sticks.
The attack was blamed on soldiers of the al-Mahdi Army loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Ten Schofield soldiers were wounded Sunday in a bomb and small-arms attack near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk. Another Schofield soldier was killed in that attack. The Army is not releasing his identity pending notification of the family.
Five of the 10 soldiers wounded were in stable condition and the other five returned to active duty.
About 9,000 Schofield soldiers are stationed in the Middle East.
The Department of Defense said Witkowski, a cook with the 7th Field Artillery, 25th Infantry Division (Light), was injured in Kandahar on Friday and flown to Homberg, Germany, where he died Saturday.
"I always said better Afghanistan than Iraq," Tina Witkowski said yesterday in a telephone call from Washington, where she had moved the family from Schofield earlier this month.
"Phil even called me three days before he died because he was on a Humvee with a gun," she said. "He told me it was an awesome experience. He told me he was going to come home and it was safe."
The Army told Tina Witkowski that her husband was the victim of an accident while he was placing a machine gun onto a Humvee, she said.
"I don't know exactly what happened," she said. "For some reason it went off on him. For some reason the weapon was facing toward him."
The weapon automatically shoots several rounds when fired, she said, but her husband's condition had been stable enough that at one point the Army planned to fly Tina Witkowski to Germany, she said.
"I feel like I am supposed to be in Germany now and he is supposed to be alive," she said. "It's not real. I feel like I'm supposed to be there taking care of him."
Friends in Hawai'i are struggling with Witkowski's death. Carolyn Jenkins said it was the last thing she expected to hear.
"We thought this whole time, he was going to be fine," Jenkins said. "And as we said our last goodbyes when he boarded the bus, the whole idea of him not coming back was never in our mind."
Tina Witkowski is one of Jenkins' best friends. They met when they were ninth-graders growing up in Salt Lake because their parents attended Pearl Harbor Korean Baptist Church. When Witkowski's family moved away, they lost touch, only to be reunited two years ago when Phillip Witkowski was assigned to Schofield.
Jenkins said her friend's husband was "very laid back." It was like having a new brother, she said.
"He was the goofy jokester guy and when he tried to be serious, he couldn't," Jenkins said. "No one would ever take him seriously. He was very easygoing."
Jenkins and her family would often barbecue at their Pearl City peninsula home with the Witkowskis.
Phillip Witkowski was partial to her Korean marinated steaks and that memory makes her smile, Jenkins said.
"I would cut it in the kitchen and Phil was always the first in the kitchen to taste it," Jenkins recalled. "And he would say, always, 'This is perfect. It's wonderful.' At times, I can still hear him in the house saying that."
Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8012.
