Fratricide and Lies on the Field of Battle : Army inquiries on GI’s death in Gulf War were incomplete and inaccurate, GAO charges

On Feb. 27, 1991, one day before the Persian Gulf War ended, Army Cpl. Douglas Lance Fielder was killed in the Iraqi desert. His parents were told that Fielder had died as a result of Iraqi fire. Two months later, however, two soldiers from Fielder’s unit told a different story.

Fielder, they said, was accidentally shot by other Americans and the real cause of his death was covered up. So extensive was the attempted deception by certain officers that, according to a subsequent investigation by Congress’ General Accounting Office, the actual location of Fielder’s death was misstated in reports and three soldiers involved in the shooting incident were awarded Bronze Stars for valor because they supposedly had engaged the enemy in a heroic manner. Those awards are now being revoked.

Persistence by Fielder’s parents in demanding the truth and a 20-month investigation by the GAO have finally brought the facts to light.

The Army conducted two investigations of its own and recommended that “all personnel . . . be absolved of any criminal or administrative responsibility”; the GAO branded those inquiries incomplete and inaccurate. One field officer accused by the GAO of providing “misleading statements,” Col. Douglas Starr, has left the Army. A second, Lt. Col. John Daly Jr., is currently assigned to the Pentagon. According to a confidential GAO report obtained by U.S. News & World Report, official reprimands of Starr and Daly were never placed in their permanent records, on orders from an unnamed Army general.

Fielder was one of 35 Americans known to have been killed in the Gulf War by what the military persists in describing as friendly fire but what the GAO report more candidly calls fratricide. Such accidental combat deaths have been all but unavoidable at least since the invention of explosives. Greatly improved battlefield communications have reduced opportunities for such tragic mistakes. What apparently can never be eliminated is plain human error. The Army review of the Fielder case found, for example, that troops commanded by Starr and Daly had failed to follow their rules of engagement, under which they were to fire only if fired upon first.

If fratricidal killings can’t be eliminated they at least can be honestly admitted. Inexcusably, it has taken more than four years for the truth in the Fielder case to emerge. From everything that’s known, the effort to obscure the truth wasn’t motivated by a wish to spare Fielder’s parents additional pain. It was instead to protect the careers of certain commanders. Public congressional hearings are now likely, to air the facts that the Army should have revealed long ago.