Hope Turns to Heartache for Families of the 507th

They had expected the knock.

Their husbands, brothers, sons and daughters had been missing in Iraq since a March 23 ambush near Nasiriyah. As the days passed without news, the families prepared for heartache.

Then, a daring raid. Pfc. Jessica Lynch, a supply clerk in the ambushed convoy -- one of the missing -- was rescued from an Iraqi hospital Tuesday and flown to freedom by American commandos. She was alive. She was safe. For the families of her comrades, hope flared.

But Lynch’s rescuers also found bodies in the hospital compound. The bodies were believed to be U.S. soldiers.

On Friday night, the knocks came.

Army officers rapped on doors on the Navajo reservation in Tuba City, Ariz., and in the suburbs of Cleveland, in the dusty expanse of west Texas and in a small town in Louisiana. They brought the news the families had feared.

The seven missing soldiers from the 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company, and one mechanic from the 3rd Infantry who had joined them on their mission, were dead. A ninth body has not yet been identified.

The 507th, stationed at Ft. Bliss, near El Paso, was not supposed to be a combat unit; the troops were mechanics and technicians. The officers at the door could provide few details of how they died. But the torment of waiting was over. The families knew.

“This was the visit we didn’t want to get,” said Randy Kiehl, who lost a son, Spc. James Kiehl, 22, a computer technician.

The young soldier’s wife, Jill, is due to deliver their first baby, a son, within weeks.

“She’s holding up OK,” Randy Kiehl said.

His wife, Janie, broke in: “She’s doing OK, for being 21 and a widow.”

Before he left, Spc. Kiehl gave his wife a big teddy bear that can tape and replay a message. He recorded his voice so she could hear it when she’s lonely. When Jill Kiehl pushes a button in the bear, her husband talks. “I’ll see you when I get back,” he says.

Here at Ft. Bliss, almost every family aches along with Jill Kiehl and other family members of the 507th. “Even if you don’t know them, you’re all on the same team,” said Drill Sgt. Marion Winston, 29. Photos of the eight dead soldiers stretched across the front page of the El Paso Times on Saturday. The headline: “Worst News Possible.”

On streets decked with yellow ribbons and American flags, soldiers and their spouses found themselves trying to imagine -- or trying to stop imagining -- the dread of that knock on the door.

“Oh, their pain,” said Concepcion Pugh, 29, whose husband has not yet been deployed overseas.

“Everybody was rallying together to keep the hope alive,” said William Brazzle, 32. His wife, an Army captain, is in Iraq.

“You always hope it won’t come to this. You know a lot of other people could be in the same situation,” Brazzle said. He paused, then corrected himself: “You know you could be in the same situation.”

Gregory and Deadre Lynch almost were.

Family members briefed on the fate of the 507th Maintenance Company said the ambush occurred after several vehicles in a convoy to the front lines stalled for unknown reasons. More than a dozen soldiers stopped to repair them. Later, as they raced to catch up with the larger, armored vehicles ahead, they came under fire from Iraqi tanks and infantry.

Jessica Lynch, 19, of Palestine, W.Va., was apparently among six soldiers taken captive. The other five were shown on Iraqi TV, being interrogated, shortly after the firefight.

The same footage included a view of several bodies, a few apparently shot in the head. They are believed to be some of the dead who were listed as missing in action until their bodies were recovered on the grounds of Saddam Hospital during the raid to rescue Lynch.

Gregory and Deadre Lynch learned that eight of the bodies had been identified as the couple arrived at the airport in Charleston, W.Va., on their way to visit their daughter in a military hospital in Germany. Among the dead was Pfc. Lori Ann Piestewa, their daughter’s roommate and close friend.

“Our hearts are really saddened for the other troop members and their families,” Gregory Lynch said. His voice broke. He walked away, toward the plane.

The dead soldiers ranged from recruits fresh out of high school to veterans near retirement. They were mechanics and computer technicians, cooks and truck drivers, trained to supply combat troops and to keep equipment in good repair.

They were supposed to be stationed well behind the front lines.

Many had reassured their families they would be safe.

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Pfc. Lori Ann Piestewa

Pfc. Lori Ann Piestewa, the first female American soldier killed in the war, left a son, 4, and a daughter, 3. She also left a very proud community.

Piestewa, 23, was one of the few Native Americans serving in the military. A Hopi woman who grew up on the impoverished Navajo reservation in Arizona, she enlisted in the Army about two years ago, after she and her husband divorced. But she had long expressed interest in a military career: As a high school student, she served as a commanding officer of Junior ROTC, leading her Tuba City classmates in drills. Both her father and grandfather served in the Army.

During the long wait for news about her fate, the Hopi and Navajo people -- who live together on the reservation but have feuded for years -- came together to pray and march in solidarity.

“Our family is proud of her. She is our hero,” her brother, Wayland Piestewa, said.

“She will be remembered as a daughter, as a proud mother of two, as a good friend able to comfort others in distress,” Hopi Tribal Chairman Wayne Taylor said.

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Sgt. George Buggs

Sgt. George Buggs, 31, had been married nine years. He had dated his wife, Wanda, since ninth grade.

Wanda has been praying since her husband went missing, her hopes rising and falling with news from Iraq. Now that she knows he is dead, she says, she is prepared to move on. She uses the word “recovery,” but she knows she cannot recover, not without her high school sweetheart at her side.

“It’s not something you get over,” she said.

Sgt. Buggs grew up in rural Barnwell, S.C., and joined the Army in 1992. A mechanic, he fixed tanks and Humvees and loved the military life, loved “all the things that it could offer,” his wife said.

Buggs was attached to the 3rd Infantry Division, based at Ft. Stewart, Ga. Members of the 507th Maintenance Company asked him to join them on their mission to the front lines, apparently because they needed an extra mechanic with his particular skills. “They were short, so they grabbed a couple of guys and said, ‘Come with us.’ It was some really bad luck,” said Staff Sgt. Robert Harrison, a spokesman at Ft. Stewart.

Buggs leaves his wife and their 12-year-old son.

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Pvt. Ruben Estrella Soto

Pvt. Ruben Estrella Soto, 18, joined the Army after graduating from high school in El Paso. He enlisted not for adventure, his father said, but for an education. He aimed for a career in computers or engineering -- and he thought the Army could help.

His father didn’t want him to go.

“I knew it was a difficult life,” Ruben Estrella Sr., told the El Paso Times last week.

Pvt. Estrella, a football player in high school, repaired military equipment with the 507th. His friends in El Paso described him as a joyful person, always joking. He had asked his girlfriend to marry him shortly before he deployed to Iraq.

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Spc. James M. Kiehl

Spc. James M. Kiehl, 22, was the son of veterans: His mother served in the Navy, his father in the Army.

He grew up in Southern California, near Thousand Oaks, but when he was a teen, his parents divorced and he moved with his dad to the tiny town of Comfort, Texas -- where people ride their horses to buy a gallon of milk, where the graduating class of the local high school is about 35 each year. At 6 foot 8, he excelled on the basketball court. He also won awards for his talent on the trumpet.

“He’s going to be remembered as someone who always wanted to help and always pitched in and always struggled to do his best for everyone,” his stepmother, Janie, said.

Kiehl joined the Army shortly after graduating from Comfort High School, hoping to spend a few years in the service to build computer skills. He met his wife, Jill, during technical training in Georgia.

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Chief Warrant Officer Johnny Villareal Mata

Chief Warrant Officer Johnny Villareal Mata, 35, grew up in the small town of Pecos, Texas. He joined the Army as a teenager, fresh off the high school football team, and made it his career.

“Whatever he was required to do, he was willing to do,” said his cousin, Javier Contreras. “Even giving his life for his country.”

News last week of Lynch’s rescue had electrified the Mata family. “We were delighted. We thought there was hope for the other soldiers who were missing,” Contreras said.

“Our hearts are sad,” he said. “He will be deeply missed.”

Mata leaves a wife, a teenage son and a young daughter.

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Master Sgt. Robert J. Dowdy

Master Sgt. Robert J. Dowdy, 38, was two years from retirement.

A soldier for 18 years, he had followed his older brother into military service. That brother, Army Reserve Master Sgt. Jack Dowdy Jr., could not talk much Saturday. “It’s been a trying time,” he said.

Robert Dowdy grew up in Cleveland and was known as an avid competitive runner who enjoyed pushing himself in road races. The greatest joy in his life, his brother said, was his teenage daughter. She and his wife live in DeRidder, La.

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Pvt. Brandon Sloan

More than 300 people attended a prayer service for Pvt. Brandon Sloan last week at the community center in Bedford Heights, Ohio. They called him family.

Sloan, 19, grew up in the Cleveland suburb. A defensive lineman on the high school football team, he was known as a friendly, soft-spoken kid with a passion for sports.

Sloan dropped out of high school during his senior year because he wanted so badly to enlist. He thought the Army would help him develop his potential, according to his father, the Rev. Tandy Sloan, an associate pastor at a Cleveland church.

The Rev. Sloan spoke with his son just before he was sent to Iraq. The young soldier was confident, his father reported -- and ready to take on the challenges.

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Sgt. Donald R. Walters

Sgt. Donald Walters, 33, was on his second tour of duty for the Army and in his second war in the Persian Gulf.

He had enlisted fresh out of high school in Salem, Ore., in 1988. “I guess he was following my footsteps,” said his father, Norman Walters, a 20-year veteran of the Air Force. “He felt it was his duty to serve his country,” Walters told the Associated Press.

Sgt. Walters fought with the infantry in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. His mother, Arlene, filled scrapbooks with news clippings about the combat and taped TV footage to show him when he returned. But he didn’t want to revisit the fight. Once home safely, his parents said, he had trouble eating and sleeping. His hands shook.

When his four-year tour was up, Walters moved into civilian life as a corrections officer in Kansas City. He and his wife had two daughters, now 7 and 5.

Last year, after a divorce and remarriage, Walters re-enlisted. His family said he was drawn to the structure and discipline of the Army and hoped to build a more stable life for his second wife and their 9-month-old daughter, Amber.

Walters was a cook with the maintenance company at Ft. Bliss. His parents said he was not pleased to be returning to the gulf. But he was ready, they said, to do his duty.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Toll on the battlefield

Military totals (as of 5 p.m. Pacific time Saturday)

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U.S Britain Iraq Killed 79 27 Unknown

Missing 8 0 Unknown

Captured 7 0 6,500

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Civilian casualties

* Iraq has said at least 650 civilians have been killed. Two British journalists, an American journalist, an Australian journalist and an Iranian journalist also have been killed.

On the Web

Go to www.latimes.com throughout the day for updated stories, photos and video reports from Times correspondents in Iraq and the surrounding region.

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Times staff writers Ken Ellingwood, Scott Gold and Tom Gorman and researcher Lynn Marshall contributed to this report.