In mourning four of their nation’s soldiers mistakenly killed in Afghanistan last spring, many Canadians initially were certain that gung-ho American pilots were to blame.
But a steady stream of mitigating evidence in recent months has shaken that certitude, even as Maj. Harry Schmidt and Maj. William Umbach, members of an Illinois Air National Guard unit, prepare for a military hearing next week to determine whether they will be court-martialed for mistaking a Canadian training exercise for enemy fire.
In the latest disclosure, transcripts from Schmidt’s interrogation hours after the April 17 incident show that he said pilots had been warned to expect at least 2,000 Taliban fighters near Kandahar, some armed with anti-aircraft weapons.
“In our briefing this evening from intel, we were also briefed that Taliban expected to receive [such] weapons from Iran to defend against Coalition aircraft,” he said in a written statement, partly explaining why he dropped a 500-pound, laser-guided bomb on flashes that turned out to be from the Canadians.
Even before that revelation, public sentiment in Canada appeared to be shifting in this rare case of U.S. military personnel charged in a wartime “friendly fire” incident. A recent editorial in The Halifax Daily News captured the mood.
“When the `friendly fire’ deaths in Afghanistan first became public in April, the reaction in the country was immediate, and visceral. . . . It’s the trigger-happy Yanks’ fault, for sure,” the editorial read, before adding, “The truth behind the deaths may be more complicated than it first seemed. But the truth is what we need.”
The effort to uncover that truth plays out next week inside a converted conference room on the outskirts of Shreveport, La. On Monday morning, Schmidt, 37, and Umbach, 43, will file into a light blue-carpeted room at Barksdale Air Force Base for an Article 32 hearing, the military equivalent of a grand jury proceeding.
About two weeks later, the Springfield-based Air National Guard pilots will know the answer to one of the questions that has haunted them since their flight over Afghanistan: Will they be court-martialed for killing four allied soldiers and wounding eight others?
Whatever the outcome, the wife of one of the pilots says the harm to military morale already has been inflicted as the U.S. contemplates war with Iraq.
“The damage is done because it just weakens the military family,” Lisa Schmidt said from her Springfield-area home over the weekend. “Because they’re not sure the military system will support them.”
Her husband feels “betrayed” by the experience, said Schmidt, who as a Navy nurse stationed in San Diego cared for “friendly fire” victims from the Persian Gulf war. “He is holding it together. He is coping. But this has just absolutely torn him apart.
“And I think there’s a huge element of sadness, because flying was a passion for him. He loved it, he was very good at it,” she said of her husband, a former Top Gun instructor during his active-duty Navy career. “It’s difficult for him to imagine ever going back to where he was before this in his flying career–even if they said he could.”
The Article 32 hearing could result in a recommendation for court-martial, some lesser punishment or dismissal of involuntary manslaughter and other charges. If convicted at a court-martial, the pilots would face up to 64 years in prison.
A military inquiry last year found that they “demonstrated poor airmanship and judgment and a fundamental lack of flight discipline” by not waiting for verification that the muzzle bursts came from enemy fire.
Recent news media attention has focused on the pilots’ use that night of a form of amphetamine–known in the military as “go pills”– to keep them awake during long missions.
But attorneys for the men consistently have said the key to their defense will be alleged breakdowns in communication between air and ground forces; in particular, that the pilots never were told of the allied training exercise being conducted on that April night.
In the weeks leading up to the mistaken bombing, pilots had complained about such breakdowns–an assertion included in Schmidt’s written statement shortly after the incident.
“One of my greatest fears came to realization tonight of not knowing [where] friendlies are, not knowing of their operations, [then] ending up in the middle of a perceived firefight,” he wrote. “The friendlies executing a live fire in a hostile zone and in the vicinity of friendly airplanes is unsatisfactory, adding to the `fog of war.'”
Since the military announced charges against the two men in September, their supporters have waged a public-relations battle with a steady release of new information.
Some of the surviving Canadian soldiers, for instance, reportedly admitted firing their weapons in the air, not simply straight ahead.
The pilots’ attorneys will get the chance to question those soldiers during the proceedings that begin next week. Unlike a civilian grand jury proceeding, Article 32 hearings allow defense lawyers to question witnesses.
Military officials have rejected the most frequent complaint of the pilots’ supporters: that they are being sacrificed to appease a key ally and mask the mistakes of their superiors.
In writing to an aide to Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), an Air Force legislative liaison official, Col. Bill Groves, said the military’s handling of the case has not been based “on anyone’s alleged scheme to cover up any alleged systemic failure, to please the Canadian government . . . to shift someone else’s blame on the majors, or somehow make the majors scapegoats for the deaths of Canadian soldiers. Such speculation is simply untrue.”
As the hearing approaches, some Canadian military veterans have added their voices of support. Stewart Coxford, a Royal Canadian Air Force navigator in World War II, wrote Schmidt’s family about how Canadian aircraft accidentally hit their own troops in a bombing run two months after D-Day.
Next week’s hearing, Coxford said, is “absolutely stupid because there’s a war on, and that’s what happens in war. It’s happened thousands of times.”
Schmidt’s close friends from his Top Gun days said they worried that the legal proceedings would sow doubt in the minds of other fighter pilots.
“Do I think what has happened to Harry will be in the mind of the next pilot who has to hit the pickle button [releasing a bomb]? The answer is `yes,'” said Warren Christie, 36, who got to know Schmidt when they were instructors at the Navy’s elite fighter school.
The pilots’ family members have been heartened by the recent news coverage. But some can’t bring themselves to be too optimistic–not even Schmidt’s mother, Joan, who has waged a one-woman crusade via e-mail from her St. Louis home.
“I never expected this to happen in the first place. I never expected them to even be charged as criminals,” she said. So “I don’t know what’s in [the Air Force officials’] minds.”
