1,000 soldiers dead since
9/11
Jimmy Breslin
August 3, 2004
A rocket-propelled grenade came out of the hot afternoon in Iraq on July 7 and made Pfc. Samuel Bowen of Cleveland the 1,000th member of the U.S. military to die in battle since the World Trade Center attack.
The number of dead is carefully compiled by the Army Times newspaper, which carries the most news about the war. The others who know he is the 1,000th are those who fought where he died.
Bowen died at 38 in the afternoon of July 7 when his Ohio National Guard engineer convoy stopped because one of the trucks broke down. Bowen and a dozen Guardsmen protected the convoy while a mechanic tried to repair the truck. Iraqis fired a rocket-propelled grenade that killed Bowen and wounded two others.
With a number of dead this high, an easily remembered figure that stands in the sky and accuses the nation, it was not surprising to have the government throw a little added tension into the steam and announce that huge New York financial buildings have been targeted by al-Qaida. There was an orange alert and cops and troops were all over.
Tom Ridge of Homeland Security made the announcement. Whenever I see Ridge, I feel he is another on the Republican campaign staff. It seems that whenever George Bush is in a little trouble, Ridge tells the public that we are going to be attacked.
George Bush is in some sort of tight situation. Yesterday, he had the figure of Sam Bowen, death number 1,000, and the report of the 9/11 Commission that he is hard-pressed to adopt. Bush the President said that we were in terrible danger and needed the alert.
The specific facts the government says it has include a study of inclines of underground parking garages. This took no breath away from anybody who remembers the Jersey City cab-driver bombers getting stuck behind a truck while trying to get out of the World Trade Center garage just before the 1993 explosion. They also had horrifying details about uniforms worn by building security people. The people who flew planes into the Trade Center needed no uniforms. I believe the forgotten bin Laden wants to bomb us tonight, if he can, but please don't try to frighten me with old details and much of the rest available on the Internet.
At the Citigroup Center on Lexington and 53rd, 18 police cars were parked. In a row, there were cars from the 112, 110, 114, 111, 112, 113, 109, 110 and 104 precincts. All pulled in from Queens. Don't ever say that Queens doesn't fight. Officer Neumann, from the 108 in Long Island City, was on duty in front of a clothes shop on the ground floor. "Is anybody left in Queens?" he was asked. He laughed and was smart enough not to say anything.
"The place is as empty as Sunday," a guy coming out of the building said. He said he was from Washington Heights and that was it. "I just came from a meeting of Boston Properties, we had 50 managers there. They were worried about shops on the ground floor. One of them wants a concrete barrier at the curb. One manager had a very good idea. He wanted to have NYPD cops as rent-a-cops. You hire them off-duty for your building security. In uniform."
Pfc. Sam Bowen, whose brave death caused Bush's people to spread fear, was coming out of a PX in Camp Anaconda in Iraq on June 16 with a friend, Ronald Eaton. They had bought soda. Suddenly, a rocket landed to Eaton's right. Shrapnel ripped his side. There was a second rocket. Shrapnel hit Bowen. Then Bowen was on his feet. He dragged Eaton out of the area. "He helped some others before he helped himself," Eaton was saying yesterday. "Then he drove two and a half hours to our base at Tikrit. He was a true hero."
Bowen was in the 112th Engineer Battalion of the Ohio National Guard. When he arrived in Iraq, they had him in the morale, welfare and recreation office. He got out of there in as hurry. He became a driver for a sergeant, Paul Brondhaver. "He drove me 2,000 miles of combat patrols," Brondhaver recalls.
On July 7, Bowen was driving Brondhaver in an unarmored humvee. They were last in the convoy that stopped. They got out to guard the others and the rocket took care of Bowen.
Ronald Eaton, his friend, who lives in Lakewood, was at the armory headquarters of their 112th Engineers for a party for a soldier retiring. Two officers from the unit took Eaton off to the side. They told him they just had come from telling Bowen's wife that he was dead in Iraq. Eaton would not allow this to sink in. He was dazed and resistant. Bowen was one side of his life.
Eaton yesterday was at Camp Atterbury in Indiana for medical treatment. His liver took shrapnel.
"He can't be dead," Eaton said. "I think he'll come home with the unit in February. Yes, sir, I do expect to see him."
He won't.
Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.
