Nickdfresh
03-01-2005, 06:48 PM
What Happened To Matt Maupin?
A HOMETOWN WAITS FOR THE ONLY AMERICAN G.I. UNACCOUNTED FOR IN THE WAR, SNATCHED BY INSURGENTS 10 MONTHS AGO
http://i.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/mia/images/splash.jpg
By MARK THOMPSON
Feb. 21, 2005
It's been a long, scarring year for the soldiers of the Army Reserve's 724th Transportation Company, but they are finally coming home from Iraq. Their families are busy making plans for a welcome-home bash at the end of the month. They've booked the Blossom banquet room at the Cranberry Lodge near the unit's Wisconsin base. Buffalo wings and pizza will be the featured fare, at the soldiers' request. It will be the last chance for the reservists to celebrate their safe return together before they disperse to pick up their civilian lives.
One member of the 160-strong company, however, will be conspicuously absent. He is Keith (Matt) Maupin, the only American soldier who is unaccounted for in Iraq. Ten months ago, insurgents ambushed a convoy guarded by the 724th and took Private First Class Maupin, then 20, captive. There have been conflicting reports on his fate. He was seen alive on one videotape, reported killed on another. Without proof of his death, the Army presumes he is still alive. His family fervently prays that is so. The months have ticked by, and Maupin has been promoted to the rank of specialist and turned 21. While most of the country may have forgotten about him since news of his capture made headlines and his bewildered face under a floppy hat was flashed across America's television screens, his hometown has not.
Because no one in Batavia, a sleepy village of 1,600 on the eastern fringe of Cincinnati, Ohio, knows where Matt Maupin is, he is everywhere. SPC MATT MAUPIN--OUR PRAYERS ARE WITH YOU AND YOURS, the big electric sign at Jeff Wyler Auto Mall flashes once a minute. At the top of every hour, the local oldies radio station, WGRR, airs a booming jingle: "Joining you in all our prayers for Matt Maupin." Incongruous messages dot the strip malls along busy Route 32, which bisects Clermont County. PRAY FOR MATT MAUPIN AND FAMILY LARGE CHEESE $5.99, says the sign outside Snappy Tomato Pizza.
As you get closer to the Maupin home, several miles west of Batavia, his last name vanishes. OUR PRAYERS ARE WITH MATT, says the sign at Uncle Bob's Self Storage at the end of Schoolhouse Road, where he grew up. THINKING OF MATT, says the one at Willowville Elementary School, which he attended. Glen Este High School, from which Maupin graduated in 2001, has become a shrine of hope. Hundreds of red, white and blue plastic cups are stuck into chain-link fencing, spelling out his name and framing his picture. The winter weather has taken a toll on the yellow ribbons in town, but residents say replacements will come with the spring, along with nature's yellow displays of daffodils and forsythia. "People have a tendency to forget," concedes Keith Maupin, Matt's father. "We're not going to let that happen."
The Maupins are living the Iraq war in a way unlike any other U.S. family, and their town is feeling it unlike any other place. More than 10,000 U.S. troops have been wounded since the invasion of Iraq nearly two years ago. Close to 1,500 have died. But Matt Maupin falls into a category of one: he is the sole U.S. soldier fighting in Iraq who is unaccounted for. "Every day it's, Where is my son? Is he alive? Is he dead? What's happening?" his mother Carolyn says in a voice skating along the edge of torment. "That fear of the unknown is one of the worst things you can ever go through."
The Maupins' spirits have been buoyed by visits and calls from President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. But their heartache is growing. They are in a special kind of pain because of the special kind of war their son is fighting. He is not "missing in action"; rather, because a group claims to have seized him, he is considered "captured." Yet he is not a "prisoner of war" because no one at the Pentagon has the faintest idea what that group--the "Persistent Power Against the Enemies of God and the Prophet"--is. Consequently, there can be no talk of the Geneva convention with his captors or of visits from the Red Cross to make sure he is being well treated or is even alive. He has simply been swallowed by some element of the hydra-headed insurgency--a missing man in the hands of a ghostly enemy.
Occasionally, the constant flow of Iraqi prisoners through U.S.-run prisons in Iraq yields leads about Maupin's whereabouts. According to U.S. military officers in Iraq, an Iraqi detainee recently led U.S. forces to the shallow grave of William Bradley, a civilian killed in the assault on Maupin's convoy. The detainee also fingered a gang in his village of Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad, as the men involved in the attack in which Maupin went missing. In the first week of January, U.S. and Iraqi special forces raided the village, seized eight suspects--one of whom led to 20 more--and found U.S. uniforms, weapons and a water cooler. If evidence gathered in the raid or interrogations of the suspects has shed light on Maupin's fate, the U.S. military is not yet prepared to say so.
Matt Maupin, born while Ronald Reagan was president, is partial to Superman, Star Wars and teriyaki beef jerky. He grew up in a trim ranch house with a basketball hoop next to the driveway and his prized red 1998 Mustang in the garage. "You can pick out most of the guys who go into the military because they walk with a certain attitude," says Nick Ayers, who played with Maupin on their high school football team, the Trojans. "But Matt was really laid-back." That quietness was infused with a drive that pushed him onto the team, as a second-string receiver and defensive back, as well as the honor roll. "He was a hardworking kid who didn't get to play as much as he wanted to, but he didn't let that deter him," says coach Zak Taylor. "We'd finish about 3:45 every day, and he'd always stay late," working out in the weight room. Younger brother Micah, 19, says Matt has always preferred action to words. "Matt works hard and does the best he can. A lot of people just yell, yell, yell, but Matt isn't like that. It's more of a lead-by-example thing with him." Despite his square-jawed handsomeness and his pony car, friends say, Matt was shy with girls. A rare dinner date would be at the Outback Steakhouse.
After high school, Maupin toyed with the idea of enlisting in the military but instead enrolled at the University of Cincinnati, studying aerospace engineering before switching to nutritional science. He also worked at the local Sam's Club warehouse store, stocking shelves. "He still works here," manager Mitch Cohen says. "He's just on a military leave of absence, and his job will be here for him when he returns." There's a tabletop display about Maupin at the front of the store, one of several in the area. Cohen, who has worked in New York and Florida, says he has never witnessed the kind of community resoluteness that has gathered the Maupins in a protective embrace. "The people here," he says, "just care a lot more than in any other place I've lived.
In August 2002, Maupin's mother recalls, "he just came to me in my bedroom one day and said, 'Mom, I joined the Army Reserve today.' And I said, 'Oh, Matt, you didn't. Why did you do it, especially at this time?' He was old enough so there wasn't anything I could do." Matt told her he signed up to earn money for school. Carolyn, 57, said they could have managed college without his enlisting. "I don't want to manage, Mom," he told her. "I want to get it done." He soon headed off to basic training at Fort Jackson, S.C.
"Neither Carol nor I wanted him to join the military," says Keith, 54, who is divorced from Matt's mother. "I told him, 'Matt, you can do what you want to do, but there's a war going on over there, and I don't care if you're in the reserves or not, you could get activated.'" At that time, U.S. forces were still fighting in Afghanistan, and rumbles of war in Iraq were growing louder. Maupin's brother Micah followed him into the service a year later, joining the active-duty Marines. Keith had served in the Marines for four years in the early 1970s.
Maupin arrived in Iraq last February. Most of his unit was based near Baghdad, attached to various support commands. One of its key missions was to protect the civilian convoys that bring everything from beans to bullets to U.S. forces scattered around Iraq. Because of their vulnerability, the convoys are key targets for insurgents. In the three letters Maupin, who had never traveled by plane before enlisting, wrote his mother, homesickness came through. "Hey Mom--I wouldn't come here on a bet--this place sucks," he wrote. ("He never used that word before," Carolyn says.) "I just want to come back to America." There were also a couple of 2 a.m., Batavia time, phone calls. "He always said, 'I love you,' at the end," she recalls, blinking back tears. Those remain his last words to her, she says, in their final phone conversation about 10 days before he was captured.
Maupin's mission last April 9, Good Friday, was to ride shotgun on a fuel tanker that was part of a mile-long convoy. Under the protection of part of the 724th, civilian contractors were hauling diesel fuel in 17 tanker trucks across 60 miles from the U.S. military's main logistics base at Camp Anaconda in Balad to Baghdad International Airport. Just west of Baghdad at about 10:30 a.m., the convoy came under sudden attack on the six-lane Abu Ghraib Expressway. "We're taking fire in the rear!" radioed a truck driver. Within seconds, the entire convoy was under a barrage from an estimated 150 insurgents lurking in roadside shacks. Bullets, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars peppered the vehicles. Fuel, pouring from punctured tankers, turned the highway as slick as ice.
A soldier behind Maupin's tanker saw it explode, swerve off the highway and plunge into a ditch. "They were hammering the daylights out of us," says Thomas Hamill, the civilian convoy commander. "I believe they were planning on taking everybody in that convoy out." While the insurgents failed in that goal, they did kill at least six Americans among the roughly 50 in the convoy. The bodies of four civilians and two soldiers from the 724th, Specialist Gregory Goodrich and Sergeant Elmer Krause, have been recovered. Hamill was taken prisoner and escaped after a month. One of the authors of Escape in Iraq, he says he knows very little about his captors and nothing of Maupin's fate. Another civilian, Timothy Bell, 45, of Mobile, Ala., remains missing.
Carolyn saw news of the attack on television at the school district's bus depot, where she is a dispatcher. "When I saw the attack on the convoy on TV at work, I knew it was Matt's," she says. On Easter Sunday, an Army major hand-delivered letters to Maupin's parents informing them that Matt was missing. The next day, the Army stormed Carolyn's home, where Matt had lived before shipping out. "There must have been 20 of them," Keith says. "There was a stress officer, a chaplain, a casualty-assistance officer." Neighbors plied the Maupins with casseroles, pies and deli trays--and an extra refrigerator to hold it all. The Marines sent Micah home temporarily from his base in Pensacola, Fla., and agreed not to send him overseas until his brother's case is resolved.
A week after Maupin disappeared, he surfaced on a video shown on al-Jazeera, the Qatari satellite channel. It showed him alive, surrounded by five gunmen masked in kaffiyehs. "My name is Keith Matthew Maupin," he said into the camera. "I am a soldier from the 1st Division." Wearing his uniform and boonie hat, Maupin appeared unharmed but dazed. "He didn't look hurt, but he was nibbling a little on his lip, which I've never seen him do before," Carolyn remembers. "I was impressed that the captors didn't have their guns pointing at him." They said on the tape that he might be swapped for insurgents held by the Americans. U.S. officials quickly rejected any such deals and pledged to do everything possible to rescue Maupin.
On June 28, a second video surfaced on al-Jazeera. Dark and grainy, it showed a blindfolded man sitting before a hole in the ground. An off-camera voice speaking in Arabic identified him as Maupin. While the station didn't broadcast the shooting, the next scene showed him being shot in the back of the head. According to the voice-over, he had been executed because the U.S. had not changed its Iraq policy.
Maupin's parents studied still photographs the Army made off the video but elected not to watch the tape itself. The clearest photo "showed a jawline, but it was really fuzzy," Keith says. "Since I've seen that video, I've looked at a lot of jaws, and there's a lot out there that look like Matt's." When the Army told Carolyn that her son might be dead, "I wasn't crying like a mother should be crying," she says. "I had to make myself cry because inside I didn't feel like it was Matt." After further investigation, the Army said the video was inconclusive and that it may have shown bullets being fired into a dummy. So Maupin remains listed as "captured," with his bank account growing with the $2,400 monthly deposit of his salary. "Matt's going to like that," his father says. "He said it's all tax free."
Clermibt County was home to Ulysses S. Grant. WE TAKE PRIDE IN OUR PEOPLE, says the plaque on the county courthouse. PERHAPS THIS IS WHY WE FLY OUR FLAGS SO HIGH. Overwhelmingly conservative and religious, the county's 186,000 residents, most of them white, tend to believe what their President tells them. They agree with him that the Iraq war had to be fought and has to be won. "I think we need to be there," Keith says. Maupin's capture hasn't blunted the county's support for President Bush: he took 71% of the vote in November, up four points from his 2000 showing. Of course, not everyone salutes the war. "The whole community is aching over this," says Don Rucknagel, a retired University of Cincinnati professor. "But this war is much bigger than this young man. We're bogged down in another quagmire." That's a minority view, though. The soldiers manning the recruiting station where Maupin enlisted say his plight hasn't hurt their efforts. "His name comes up a lot, but people don't blame the military for what happened," says Staff Sergeant Jeff Herrold. "And there are still people here brave enough to serve."
For volunteers drawn in by the Maupins' trials, the Yellow Ribbon Support Center, a nonprofit group Matt's parents started last August, is headquarters. It's housed in a couple of donated storefronts tucked into the back of a shopping center. The center has shipped about 2,000 boxes--an estimated 20 tons--of donated candy and cookies, coffee and hot chocolate, games, toothbrushes, underwear and toiletries, to U.S. troops, largely in Iraq. Each box also contains a plastic bag with 10 small pin-on badges containing a photo of Maupin and a slip of paper: "These are pictures of our captured soldier Spc. Keith 'Matt' Maupin," it says. "Please help us find him ... The Maupin Family."
Sara Chilewski and Emily Large, both 12, are at the center on a cold Saturday afternoon, punching holes into pictures of Maupin and threading bits of yellow ribbon through them. They've volunteered here before and think it's more important than doing homework or shopping at Eastgate Mall. They believe what they're doing, in some small way, might contribute to Maupin's coming home. "I really want to help him," Large says, "because I know how much the soldiers are doing for our country." Dave Foley, 55, a Vietnam Navy veteran, is amazed at the support the girls and others are offering the troops. "We never got any recognition," he says as he slips photos of Maupin into the plastic badges. "For our troops over there to know they have support in the U.S. is a great boost for morale."
The center's walls are filled with posters and T shirts bearing Maupin's picture. While some parents might not want their lost child staring at them during most of their waking hours, Keith says it soothes him. "Matt is close when I'm here," he says, "because he's everywhere." Keith, who gave up his construction job in July, relies on relatives for his minimal needs. Working full time at the center has given him a mission. It is tough being the father of the nation's only missing soldier, he says. "You don't know what the military is supposed to be doing," he says. "And we don't know what we're supposed to be doing, other than waiting for them to find Matt."
The family has received more than 15,000 letters of support, some addressed simply to "The family of the soldier captured in Iraq, Batavia, Ohio." Other messages have been posted on the center's website (www. yellow ribbon support center. com). Dozens of U.S. troops have responded to the packages. They thank the center for making their stay in Iraq a little easier and pledge to do what they can to bring Maupin home. "Recovering missing Americans is something all service members hold sacred, partly because it motivates us to do our job without worrying whether or not our country will come get us if something should happen: We know they will," a Marine recently wrote from Iraq. "We will continue to fight here, and keep looking for your son." A Thanksgiving Day note from the Army operations center at the Pentagon--signed by 20 soldiers--said they pray daily for Maupin's safe return.
But Keith and Carolyn are growing increasingly frustrated with the Army. "They call and tell us there's no update," Keith says. "We're not getting bummed out. We're actually getting pissed." Every so often Carolyn gets the urge to hunt for her son herself. "But then I realize that's just the anger of a parent," she says. "They tell me Iraq is as big as California. Where would I start looking?" Senior U.S. military officers in Washington and Iraq share the family's frustration. "We keep following up every lead we can," an Army colonel familiar with the search says. "But given the kind of enemy we're dealing with here, we've got to keep our hopes in check."
Carolyn and Keith have met with Bush four times, all during the President's frequent campaign trips to the crucial electoral state of Ohio last year. The Army casualty-assistance officer assigned to the Maupin family took Keith to the barbershop to trim his long beard--and to Sears to buy a suit--for his first meeting with the Commander in Chief; Keith has vowed not to tame his beard until his son is found. "He really didn't know much either," Keith says of the President. "But he said, 'They're looking for him, they'll get him, and they'll bring him home.'" Bush's concern has impressed the Maupins. "He talks from the heart," Keith says, "and I believe he's got a lot of sincerity and conviction in him." Carolyn says, "He found the time to come out here and talk to us, and that's a great thing for a President to do. He says they're doing all they can, but, of course, to a parent, that's never enough."
Keith chokes up when asked how he copes with the unrelenting state of not knowing. "Until Matt walks off the plane--or they carry him off--we will believe and have faith that Matt is alive," he says. Some days are tougher than others. "I'm almost certain that it's a test from God and that God is not going give you more than you can bear," he says. "But it's getting pretty heavy." He takes solace in the simple things. "Each time when it seems to be getting unbearable, something happens to lift the weight off," he says. "We've had people tell us they've had dreams in which Matt is O.K., and it's weird, but that really helps."
"I pray every day before I leave here," Carolyn says in her living room. "I go to Matt's picture, and I put my hand up to him, and I always ask God for the courage and strength to get through the day." She too has her tougher days, and sometimes that tactile prayer isn't adequate. "So sometimes I lay on the bed and cry for a little bit before I go to work," she says. Whenever she falters, she hears Matt's voice. "I have to keep on going because Matt would say, 'Mom, what are you doing?'" she says with a wan smile. "I can hear him now."
Like his mother, Micah, who is now based at California's Miramar Air Station, where he repairs helicopters, sometimes wishes he could head to Iraq to look for his brother: "I'm not special operations. It's not like I could go out and find him myself, but I would if I could." Micah faced a dilemma once his brother was captured and his parents asked him to accept the Marines' offer to stay close to home. "If he wants to go to Iraq after this, that's fine," his mother says. "But I don't need two sons over there under these conditions." Says Micah: "It was not an easy call. I really feel I should be doing my part for the country by going over there," to Iraq, Afghanistan or wherever the corps needs him. "I understand the way my mom and dad feel, but I'm not really cool with it," Micah says.
His parents are planning to head to that party welcoming the 724th home later this month. "They are Matt's family too," Carolyn says. Keith wants to make sure the returning soldiers don't feel guilty that they have come home without retrieving his son. "That's not their job," he says. The service has told the Maupins that convoy protection has been beefed up in the wake of the attack on their son's convoy. "It's a shame it had to happen this way, but I'm glad the changes have been made," Carolyn says. "But what about Matt? He's still out there." �
Time (http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,1027512,00.html)
http://www.militarystencils.com/images/SpecialtyDecals/Army/POW%20MIA.JPG
A HOMETOWN WAITS FOR THE ONLY AMERICAN G.I. UNACCOUNTED FOR IN THE WAR, SNATCHED BY INSURGENTS 10 MONTHS AGO
http://i.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/mia/images/splash.jpg
By MARK THOMPSON
Feb. 21, 2005
It's been a long, scarring year for the soldiers of the Army Reserve's 724th Transportation Company, but they are finally coming home from Iraq. Their families are busy making plans for a welcome-home bash at the end of the month. They've booked the Blossom banquet room at the Cranberry Lodge near the unit's Wisconsin base. Buffalo wings and pizza will be the featured fare, at the soldiers' request. It will be the last chance for the reservists to celebrate their safe return together before they disperse to pick up their civilian lives.
One member of the 160-strong company, however, will be conspicuously absent. He is Keith (Matt) Maupin, the only American soldier who is unaccounted for in Iraq. Ten months ago, insurgents ambushed a convoy guarded by the 724th and took Private First Class Maupin, then 20, captive. There have been conflicting reports on his fate. He was seen alive on one videotape, reported killed on another. Without proof of his death, the Army presumes he is still alive. His family fervently prays that is so. The months have ticked by, and Maupin has been promoted to the rank of specialist and turned 21. While most of the country may have forgotten about him since news of his capture made headlines and his bewildered face under a floppy hat was flashed across America's television screens, his hometown has not.
Because no one in Batavia, a sleepy village of 1,600 on the eastern fringe of Cincinnati, Ohio, knows where Matt Maupin is, he is everywhere. SPC MATT MAUPIN--OUR PRAYERS ARE WITH YOU AND YOURS, the big electric sign at Jeff Wyler Auto Mall flashes once a minute. At the top of every hour, the local oldies radio station, WGRR, airs a booming jingle: "Joining you in all our prayers for Matt Maupin." Incongruous messages dot the strip malls along busy Route 32, which bisects Clermont County. PRAY FOR MATT MAUPIN AND FAMILY LARGE CHEESE $5.99, says the sign outside Snappy Tomato Pizza.
As you get closer to the Maupin home, several miles west of Batavia, his last name vanishes. OUR PRAYERS ARE WITH MATT, says the sign at Uncle Bob's Self Storage at the end of Schoolhouse Road, where he grew up. THINKING OF MATT, says the one at Willowville Elementary School, which he attended. Glen Este High School, from which Maupin graduated in 2001, has become a shrine of hope. Hundreds of red, white and blue plastic cups are stuck into chain-link fencing, spelling out his name and framing his picture. The winter weather has taken a toll on the yellow ribbons in town, but residents say replacements will come with the spring, along with nature's yellow displays of daffodils and forsythia. "People have a tendency to forget," concedes Keith Maupin, Matt's father. "We're not going to let that happen."
The Maupins are living the Iraq war in a way unlike any other U.S. family, and their town is feeling it unlike any other place. More than 10,000 U.S. troops have been wounded since the invasion of Iraq nearly two years ago. Close to 1,500 have died. But Matt Maupin falls into a category of one: he is the sole U.S. soldier fighting in Iraq who is unaccounted for. "Every day it's, Where is my son? Is he alive? Is he dead? What's happening?" his mother Carolyn says in a voice skating along the edge of torment. "That fear of the unknown is one of the worst things you can ever go through."
The Maupins' spirits have been buoyed by visits and calls from President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. But their heartache is growing. They are in a special kind of pain because of the special kind of war their son is fighting. He is not "missing in action"; rather, because a group claims to have seized him, he is considered "captured." Yet he is not a "prisoner of war" because no one at the Pentagon has the faintest idea what that group--the "Persistent Power Against the Enemies of God and the Prophet"--is. Consequently, there can be no talk of the Geneva convention with his captors or of visits from the Red Cross to make sure he is being well treated or is even alive. He has simply been swallowed by some element of the hydra-headed insurgency--a missing man in the hands of a ghostly enemy.
Occasionally, the constant flow of Iraqi prisoners through U.S.-run prisons in Iraq yields leads about Maupin's whereabouts. According to U.S. military officers in Iraq, an Iraqi detainee recently led U.S. forces to the shallow grave of William Bradley, a civilian killed in the assault on Maupin's convoy. The detainee also fingered a gang in his village of Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad, as the men involved in the attack in which Maupin went missing. In the first week of January, U.S. and Iraqi special forces raided the village, seized eight suspects--one of whom led to 20 more--and found U.S. uniforms, weapons and a water cooler. If evidence gathered in the raid or interrogations of the suspects has shed light on Maupin's fate, the U.S. military is not yet prepared to say so.
Matt Maupin, born while Ronald Reagan was president, is partial to Superman, Star Wars and teriyaki beef jerky. He grew up in a trim ranch house with a basketball hoop next to the driveway and his prized red 1998 Mustang in the garage. "You can pick out most of the guys who go into the military because they walk with a certain attitude," says Nick Ayers, who played with Maupin on their high school football team, the Trojans. "But Matt was really laid-back." That quietness was infused with a drive that pushed him onto the team, as a second-string receiver and defensive back, as well as the honor roll. "He was a hardworking kid who didn't get to play as much as he wanted to, but he didn't let that deter him," says coach Zak Taylor. "We'd finish about 3:45 every day, and he'd always stay late," working out in the weight room. Younger brother Micah, 19, says Matt has always preferred action to words. "Matt works hard and does the best he can. A lot of people just yell, yell, yell, but Matt isn't like that. It's more of a lead-by-example thing with him." Despite his square-jawed handsomeness and his pony car, friends say, Matt was shy with girls. A rare dinner date would be at the Outback Steakhouse.
After high school, Maupin toyed with the idea of enlisting in the military but instead enrolled at the University of Cincinnati, studying aerospace engineering before switching to nutritional science. He also worked at the local Sam's Club warehouse store, stocking shelves. "He still works here," manager Mitch Cohen says. "He's just on a military leave of absence, and his job will be here for him when he returns." There's a tabletop display about Maupin at the front of the store, one of several in the area. Cohen, who has worked in New York and Florida, says he has never witnessed the kind of community resoluteness that has gathered the Maupins in a protective embrace. "The people here," he says, "just care a lot more than in any other place I've lived.
In August 2002, Maupin's mother recalls, "he just came to me in my bedroom one day and said, 'Mom, I joined the Army Reserve today.' And I said, 'Oh, Matt, you didn't. Why did you do it, especially at this time?' He was old enough so there wasn't anything I could do." Matt told her he signed up to earn money for school. Carolyn, 57, said they could have managed college without his enlisting. "I don't want to manage, Mom," he told her. "I want to get it done." He soon headed off to basic training at Fort Jackson, S.C.
"Neither Carol nor I wanted him to join the military," says Keith, 54, who is divorced from Matt's mother. "I told him, 'Matt, you can do what you want to do, but there's a war going on over there, and I don't care if you're in the reserves or not, you could get activated.'" At that time, U.S. forces were still fighting in Afghanistan, and rumbles of war in Iraq were growing louder. Maupin's brother Micah followed him into the service a year later, joining the active-duty Marines. Keith had served in the Marines for four years in the early 1970s.
Maupin arrived in Iraq last February. Most of his unit was based near Baghdad, attached to various support commands. One of its key missions was to protect the civilian convoys that bring everything from beans to bullets to U.S. forces scattered around Iraq. Because of their vulnerability, the convoys are key targets for insurgents. In the three letters Maupin, who had never traveled by plane before enlisting, wrote his mother, homesickness came through. "Hey Mom--I wouldn't come here on a bet--this place sucks," he wrote. ("He never used that word before," Carolyn says.) "I just want to come back to America." There were also a couple of 2 a.m., Batavia time, phone calls. "He always said, 'I love you,' at the end," she recalls, blinking back tears. Those remain his last words to her, she says, in their final phone conversation about 10 days before he was captured.
Maupin's mission last April 9, Good Friday, was to ride shotgun on a fuel tanker that was part of a mile-long convoy. Under the protection of part of the 724th, civilian contractors were hauling diesel fuel in 17 tanker trucks across 60 miles from the U.S. military's main logistics base at Camp Anaconda in Balad to Baghdad International Airport. Just west of Baghdad at about 10:30 a.m., the convoy came under sudden attack on the six-lane Abu Ghraib Expressway. "We're taking fire in the rear!" radioed a truck driver. Within seconds, the entire convoy was under a barrage from an estimated 150 insurgents lurking in roadside shacks. Bullets, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars peppered the vehicles. Fuel, pouring from punctured tankers, turned the highway as slick as ice.
A soldier behind Maupin's tanker saw it explode, swerve off the highway and plunge into a ditch. "They were hammering the daylights out of us," says Thomas Hamill, the civilian convoy commander. "I believe they were planning on taking everybody in that convoy out." While the insurgents failed in that goal, they did kill at least six Americans among the roughly 50 in the convoy. The bodies of four civilians and two soldiers from the 724th, Specialist Gregory Goodrich and Sergeant Elmer Krause, have been recovered. Hamill was taken prisoner and escaped after a month. One of the authors of Escape in Iraq, he says he knows very little about his captors and nothing of Maupin's fate. Another civilian, Timothy Bell, 45, of Mobile, Ala., remains missing.
Carolyn saw news of the attack on television at the school district's bus depot, where she is a dispatcher. "When I saw the attack on the convoy on TV at work, I knew it was Matt's," she says. On Easter Sunday, an Army major hand-delivered letters to Maupin's parents informing them that Matt was missing. The next day, the Army stormed Carolyn's home, where Matt had lived before shipping out. "There must have been 20 of them," Keith says. "There was a stress officer, a chaplain, a casualty-assistance officer." Neighbors plied the Maupins with casseroles, pies and deli trays--and an extra refrigerator to hold it all. The Marines sent Micah home temporarily from his base in Pensacola, Fla., and agreed not to send him overseas until his brother's case is resolved.
A week after Maupin disappeared, he surfaced on a video shown on al-Jazeera, the Qatari satellite channel. It showed him alive, surrounded by five gunmen masked in kaffiyehs. "My name is Keith Matthew Maupin," he said into the camera. "I am a soldier from the 1st Division." Wearing his uniform and boonie hat, Maupin appeared unharmed but dazed. "He didn't look hurt, but he was nibbling a little on his lip, which I've never seen him do before," Carolyn remembers. "I was impressed that the captors didn't have their guns pointing at him." They said on the tape that he might be swapped for insurgents held by the Americans. U.S. officials quickly rejected any such deals and pledged to do everything possible to rescue Maupin.
On June 28, a second video surfaced on al-Jazeera. Dark and grainy, it showed a blindfolded man sitting before a hole in the ground. An off-camera voice speaking in Arabic identified him as Maupin. While the station didn't broadcast the shooting, the next scene showed him being shot in the back of the head. According to the voice-over, he had been executed because the U.S. had not changed its Iraq policy.
Maupin's parents studied still photographs the Army made off the video but elected not to watch the tape itself. The clearest photo "showed a jawline, but it was really fuzzy," Keith says. "Since I've seen that video, I've looked at a lot of jaws, and there's a lot out there that look like Matt's." When the Army told Carolyn that her son might be dead, "I wasn't crying like a mother should be crying," she says. "I had to make myself cry because inside I didn't feel like it was Matt." After further investigation, the Army said the video was inconclusive and that it may have shown bullets being fired into a dummy. So Maupin remains listed as "captured," with his bank account growing with the $2,400 monthly deposit of his salary. "Matt's going to like that," his father says. "He said it's all tax free."
Clermibt County was home to Ulysses S. Grant. WE TAKE PRIDE IN OUR PEOPLE, says the plaque on the county courthouse. PERHAPS THIS IS WHY WE FLY OUR FLAGS SO HIGH. Overwhelmingly conservative and religious, the county's 186,000 residents, most of them white, tend to believe what their President tells them. They agree with him that the Iraq war had to be fought and has to be won. "I think we need to be there," Keith says. Maupin's capture hasn't blunted the county's support for President Bush: he took 71% of the vote in November, up four points from his 2000 showing. Of course, not everyone salutes the war. "The whole community is aching over this," says Don Rucknagel, a retired University of Cincinnati professor. "But this war is much bigger than this young man. We're bogged down in another quagmire." That's a minority view, though. The soldiers manning the recruiting station where Maupin enlisted say his plight hasn't hurt their efforts. "His name comes up a lot, but people don't blame the military for what happened," says Staff Sergeant Jeff Herrold. "And there are still people here brave enough to serve."
For volunteers drawn in by the Maupins' trials, the Yellow Ribbon Support Center, a nonprofit group Matt's parents started last August, is headquarters. It's housed in a couple of donated storefronts tucked into the back of a shopping center. The center has shipped about 2,000 boxes--an estimated 20 tons--of donated candy and cookies, coffee and hot chocolate, games, toothbrushes, underwear and toiletries, to U.S. troops, largely in Iraq. Each box also contains a plastic bag with 10 small pin-on badges containing a photo of Maupin and a slip of paper: "These are pictures of our captured soldier Spc. Keith 'Matt' Maupin," it says. "Please help us find him ... The Maupin Family."
Sara Chilewski and Emily Large, both 12, are at the center on a cold Saturday afternoon, punching holes into pictures of Maupin and threading bits of yellow ribbon through them. They've volunteered here before and think it's more important than doing homework or shopping at Eastgate Mall. They believe what they're doing, in some small way, might contribute to Maupin's coming home. "I really want to help him," Large says, "because I know how much the soldiers are doing for our country." Dave Foley, 55, a Vietnam Navy veteran, is amazed at the support the girls and others are offering the troops. "We never got any recognition," he says as he slips photos of Maupin into the plastic badges. "For our troops over there to know they have support in the U.S. is a great boost for morale."
The center's walls are filled with posters and T shirts bearing Maupin's picture. While some parents might not want their lost child staring at them during most of their waking hours, Keith says it soothes him. "Matt is close when I'm here," he says, "because he's everywhere." Keith, who gave up his construction job in July, relies on relatives for his minimal needs. Working full time at the center has given him a mission. It is tough being the father of the nation's only missing soldier, he says. "You don't know what the military is supposed to be doing," he says. "And we don't know what we're supposed to be doing, other than waiting for them to find Matt."
The family has received more than 15,000 letters of support, some addressed simply to "The family of the soldier captured in Iraq, Batavia, Ohio." Other messages have been posted on the center's website (www. yellow ribbon support center. com). Dozens of U.S. troops have responded to the packages. They thank the center for making their stay in Iraq a little easier and pledge to do what they can to bring Maupin home. "Recovering missing Americans is something all service members hold sacred, partly because it motivates us to do our job without worrying whether or not our country will come get us if something should happen: We know they will," a Marine recently wrote from Iraq. "We will continue to fight here, and keep looking for your son." A Thanksgiving Day note from the Army operations center at the Pentagon--signed by 20 soldiers--said they pray daily for Maupin's safe return.
But Keith and Carolyn are growing increasingly frustrated with the Army. "They call and tell us there's no update," Keith says. "We're not getting bummed out. We're actually getting pissed." Every so often Carolyn gets the urge to hunt for her son herself. "But then I realize that's just the anger of a parent," she says. "They tell me Iraq is as big as California. Where would I start looking?" Senior U.S. military officers in Washington and Iraq share the family's frustration. "We keep following up every lead we can," an Army colonel familiar with the search says. "But given the kind of enemy we're dealing with here, we've got to keep our hopes in check."
Carolyn and Keith have met with Bush four times, all during the President's frequent campaign trips to the crucial electoral state of Ohio last year. The Army casualty-assistance officer assigned to the Maupin family took Keith to the barbershop to trim his long beard--and to Sears to buy a suit--for his first meeting with the Commander in Chief; Keith has vowed not to tame his beard until his son is found. "He really didn't know much either," Keith says of the President. "But he said, 'They're looking for him, they'll get him, and they'll bring him home.'" Bush's concern has impressed the Maupins. "He talks from the heart," Keith says, "and I believe he's got a lot of sincerity and conviction in him." Carolyn says, "He found the time to come out here and talk to us, and that's a great thing for a President to do. He says they're doing all they can, but, of course, to a parent, that's never enough."
Keith chokes up when asked how he copes with the unrelenting state of not knowing. "Until Matt walks off the plane--or they carry him off--we will believe and have faith that Matt is alive," he says. Some days are tougher than others. "I'm almost certain that it's a test from God and that God is not going give you more than you can bear," he says. "But it's getting pretty heavy." He takes solace in the simple things. "Each time when it seems to be getting unbearable, something happens to lift the weight off," he says. "We've had people tell us they've had dreams in which Matt is O.K., and it's weird, but that really helps."
"I pray every day before I leave here," Carolyn says in her living room. "I go to Matt's picture, and I put my hand up to him, and I always ask God for the courage and strength to get through the day." She too has her tougher days, and sometimes that tactile prayer isn't adequate. "So sometimes I lay on the bed and cry for a little bit before I go to work," she says. Whenever she falters, she hears Matt's voice. "I have to keep on going because Matt would say, 'Mom, what are you doing?'" she says with a wan smile. "I can hear him now."
Like his mother, Micah, who is now based at California's Miramar Air Station, where he repairs helicopters, sometimes wishes he could head to Iraq to look for his brother: "I'm not special operations. It's not like I could go out and find him myself, but I would if I could." Micah faced a dilemma once his brother was captured and his parents asked him to accept the Marines' offer to stay close to home. "If he wants to go to Iraq after this, that's fine," his mother says. "But I don't need two sons over there under these conditions." Says Micah: "It was not an easy call. I really feel I should be doing my part for the country by going over there," to Iraq, Afghanistan or wherever the corps needs him. "I understand the way my mom and dad feel, but I'm not really cool with it," Micah says.
His parents are planning to head to that party welcoming the 724th home later this month. "They are Matt's family too," Carolyn says. Keith wants to make sure the returning soldiers don't feel guilty that they have come home without retrieving his son. "That's not their job," he says. The service has told the Maupins that convoy protection has been beefed up in the wake of the attack on their son's convoy. "It's a shame it had to happen this way, but I'm glad the changes have been made," Carolyn says. "But what about Matt? He's still out there." �
Time (http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,1027512,00.html)
http://www.militarystencils.com/images/SpecialtyDecals/Army/POW%20MIA.JPG