[Ansteorra] AAS Story on Brian/Frederick

[Clarissa Cartwright]

For anyone interested, and without an Austin American Stateman subscription, here is the story on 2Lt Brian Smith.

Attached photos are from the article.

Sniper kills former Austin lawyer in Iraq
Second lieutenant was checking tank when he was shot

By Claire Osborn
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Tuesday, July 06, 2004

Brian Smith

This is a photo of the market in Khalidiyah in Iraq in May 2004, taken by taken by Brian Smith, a former Austin attorney 
who was killed in Iraq on Friday July 2, 2004.
 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Brian Smith, self portrait.

   

 
When he first got to Iraq, 2nd Lt. Brian Smith warned other soldiers about using unnecessary deadly force, waved to a little
girl holding her sister and got annoyed when his commander pestered him about getting a haircut.

Four months later, the attitude of the Austin lawyer had changed. In his final e-mail home, he described pouring with sweat 
and being "drained of patience" when flashes from what appeared to be a mirror were directed at his tank crew from a 
nearby house.

"We were hot and tired and terribly, so terribly frustrated with this place and these people that we would respond to even the 
slightest provocation with enthusiastic and brutal violence," Smith wrote in the June 26 e-mail to family and friends. The 
crew fired on the house.

Six days later the 30-year-old was dead, killed by a sniper on Friday while checking the treads of his tank, according to
 Army authorities.

Smith had raised his arm as if to pull down something when the sniper shot him in the side, where he wasn't covered by 
his bulletproof vest, his mother said the Army told her. Officials at Fort Riley, Kan., where Smith was based, said Tuesday 
that he was shot while conducting combat operations in Habbaniyah, about 50 miles west of Baghdad.

Members of Smith's family have been fighting in uniform since the Revolutionary War, but he was the first to die in combat, 
said his mother, Linda Smith of McKinney, about 30 miles north of Dallas.

She said when a chaplain arrived at her house Friday to comfort her, she couldn't believe her son was dead.

"It was just surreal," Linda Smith said. "Those were Brian's favorite words — things were surreal to him when everything 
didn't seem like it should be true."

In his e-mail, Smith described the surreal landscape of combat.

Before his crew fired on the Iraqi house, Smith described how they waited to see whether the bright flashes from the 
second story would start again.

"Maybe whoever it was would notice that the tank's cannon was no longer looking down the road but was now pointing 
directly at him. Maybe he would realize that this is not a game," he wrote in the e-mail.

When the flashes resumed, he wrote, the gunner fired. Later, soldiers went into the house to inspect. They found no 
bodies or indications they had shot anyone, but the inspection yielded a buried cache of bomb-making equipment, 
Smith wrote.

After soldiers took the owner of the house into custody, Smith said, he went upstairs and saw a woman's purse under 
an overturned milk crate. "Sitting on top of it was a compact with (a) mirror," he wrote.

In his e-mail, Smith said he was convinced that one of the children who lived in the house had held the mirror and was 
trying to help the resistance against U.S. troops: "Something small, but they could fight the occupiers. So they would 
climb the stairs and use the mirror to flash light at the occupiers. To blind them. To tease them and do a little to help the fight."

He said the father was led away, but the children were not questioned or detained.

Smith grew up in McKinney and received an undergraduate degree from the University of Texas in 1991. After a stint at 
Dell Computer Corp. he attended Baylor Law School. He started a practice in McKinney, then moved to Austin.

Smith was an Eagle Scout and loved to read, his mother said.

"He was one of the most brilliant young men I ever met," said Alicia Wilde, an Austin attorney who hired Smith to work 
with her in labor and employment law in 2002. "The profession has lost somebody I don't think it will be able to replace. 
He was one of the most inquisitive minds I've ever met and one of the funniest people."

After a year of working with Wilde, Smith decided to join the Army in June 2003 because he was fascinated with tanks, 
his mother said. He was deployed to Iraq in January as a platoon leader of Company A, 1st Battalion, 34th Armor.

He got married while in the Army and was reluctant to leave his wife behind in Austin, Linda Smith said. Once in Iraq, 
however, Smith was dedicated to helping teach others how tanks operated, said Lt. Jim Meeks, who served with him in
 Iraq and has since returned to the United States.

"He led by example, not just by telling everyone what to do," Meeks said.

Smith could have asked a private to check the tank for him when he was shot, but he did it himself, Meeks said. It was 
standard operating procedure to check the treads of the tanks to make sure they didn't break down, he said.

"He was doing everything right; it was just a million-to-one shot," Meeks said.

Smith may not have thought he had any reason to be worried about his safety. In an earlier e-mail home, he wrote: 
"The Iraqis prefer to pop out of cover, point (not aim), shoot and run. They are rarely accurate. They do hide very well though."

His survivors include his mother and his father, William M. Smith, both of McKinney; his sister, Erin M. Smith of Austin; a
nd his wife, Kathleen Mary Carroll-Smith of Austin. He will be buried in McKinney. A memorial service in Austin is pending.

 

 A soldier's final message
Six days before he died, 2nd Lt. Brian Smith sent a final e-mail to family and friends.

Brian Smith

Six days before he died, 2nd Lt. Brian Smith sent a final e-mail to family and friends about how a mirror flashing in a window 
led to the discovery of a cache of bomb-making materials in an Iraqi house.


"There it is again."

"I see it."

"What is that?"

I shook my head to knock loose the sweat collecting at the tip of my nose. The heat was brutal and we still had another 
three hours to go in the shift.

I was pretty sure I knew what Kimmerling was pointing at. An intermittent white flash coming from a second story window 
or doorway about 300-400 meters away from us. It looked like someone was flashing us with a mirror. This happened 
sporadically for an hour or so every few shifts when we were in this zone.

Kids. Screwing around with a mirror. I had ignored it earlier in the year. The heat had drained me of all patience now.

"Can we shoot it?" This from Sgt. Hise.

"Yeah. Traverse left. Up. More left. Little higher. That gap right there between the palm trees.

No, up higher. More left. Hell with it. That will do. When you see it, engage and kill it."

We waited. Maybe whoever it was would notice that the tank's cannon was no longer looking down the road but was now 
pointing directly at him. Maybe he would realize that this is not a game. Maybe, just maybe, he would realize that we were
 hot and tired and terribly, so terribly frustrated with this place and these people that we would respond to even the slightest 
provocation with enthusiastic and brutal violence.

Or maybe not.

About five minutes later it came again. Flash.

Flash.

Sgt. Hise had his command to fire and did not hesitate. He squeezed his triggers and did not let up until the coax jammed
almost five seconds later.

Rounds slammed into and through the opening. They pocked the wall to its right and the ledge beneath it.

I was a little irritated that the gun jammed so quickly. So was Sgt. Hise. We should be able to

sustain a burst longer than that. Into the total silence that followed our attack I keyed my radio.

"Attack x-ray, this is 3-6, contact small arms, west, out." This was delivered with all of the drama I thought I could get away 
with. I was breathless and excited and quavery all at once. I wondered if I had overdone it.

After about thirty seconds I followed up the initial contact report with a situation report.

"Attack x-ray, this is 3-6, took contact with muzzle flashes from the second story of a house to the west. Did not hear any 
report or see strike of any rounds. Responded with single burst of coax. Cannot observe any results at this time. I am going 
to need some dismounts here to check it out. Will continue to observe."

2-2 Bradley ambled over about ten minutes later. In the interim we were giggling like schoolgirls. I admonished everyone to 
keep quiet and made sure we all had our story straight. Which was easy because it was the truth. We saw a flash and 
decided to shoot it.

We just left out the intervening five minutes of time waiting for the flash to occur again.

I directed the Bradley to the house we had shot up. Whoever lived there had helped us out tremendously by closing the 
door through whose doorway we had shot. The door was painted a vibrant yellow. It took three tries but the dismounts finally 
got to the right house. The door was easy to spot only if you were on the second floor. We eventually had to move so as to be 
able to see both the Bradley and the door in order to get them to the right one.

While waiting for 2-2, the people who lived in the house between us and our target came out to see what the ruckus was all about. 
The wall of their balcony was in the bottom part of the coax' trajectory and therefore had been shot the hell up. They looked 
at their wall, then the house opposite, then us, and decided to go back inside.

The dismounts had not been in the house more than a few minutes when one of them reported that there were no casualties, 
blood trails or brass on the ground (very disappointing) but they had stumbled onto something buried around back (very interesting).

While clearing the house, one of the fire team members walked around the back of the house and down a narrow corridor 
created between the house and the compound's border wall. This space was only three feet wide and went the length of 
the house before it turned to follow the rest of the exterior. Halfway along, his left foot sunk up to mid-shin in loose dirt 
before stopping on something solid. Being a nosy sort, he dug it up.

He found three PVC tubes containing nine primers for mortar rounds. About the same time these were unearthed; the
 man of the house rode up on his bicycle and asked the dismount at the door why there were Americans in his house. 
He was grabbed and an interpreter was summoned.

I had been monitoring company and battalion traffic. It actually sounded like battalion was going to have us cut this guy 
loose unless we either found something else or got him to confess to being the owner of those primers. I hopped off of the 
tank and joined the dismounts inside the house.

Since those asinine pictures came to light from Abu Gareb, the powers that be have imposed stringent restrictions on
 when we can detain someone. They require more of us, in the form of clearly articulated probable cause, to detain an 
Iraqi; than a policeman would be required to demonstrate to arrest an American back home.

My brain had not suffered complete military ossification and I walked up over to the Bradley

commander who was also on the ground and asked if he had a digital camera available. His gunner did. I started to 
photograph everything in sight. Once that was done I asked to see the hole.

The hole was about one cubic foot. There still appeared to be loose dirt however. I had a dismount fetch a shovel. I took it 
from him and had him move back around the corner. This was my idea and if there was a booby trap it would not be fair to 
blow him up with it. Funny, but not fair.

I dug. We had some time. The second Bradley, containing the dismount squad leader, interpreter and the Bradley platoon 
leader, 2LT Simmons, had to shake loose of a traffic control point they were conducting before they could reach us.

I started by enlarging the hole along the side of the house. The dirt was indeed loose and easily moved. Not far from the edge 
of the original hole, and at a depth about even with the bottom of it, the tip of the shovel encountered some resistance. Not rock 
or concrete, rather something that flexed but did not rip or tear. I yelled to the dismount that I had found something. He stuck 
his head around the corner to look. I shooed him back away.

The something turned out to be a fertilizer bag. I pulled out my knife, shrugged and gently cut it open.

Inside was a great deal of copper wire. I then ordered the dismount to take over and not to stop

until he hit solid earth in all directions. About the time I reached the front of the house again, the second Bradley, 2-1, rolled 
up and disgorged the other half of the rifle squad. I had the squad leader call Attack 6 and tell him that the cache was larger 
that initially reported and that we would definitely be detaining the owner of the house.

While the infantry did its job again, correctly this time, I explored the rest of the house. In the

storage room were the wife and six kids; five in their early teens, four girls and one boy; and one

additional male aged about four. The wife stood in the doorway and stared out into the small courtyard and watched us speak 
with the man who owned the house.

No one touched him. The interpreter, a tall black man, Sudanese I believe, with sunglasses, Kevlar, IBA and DCUs spoke quietly 
and politely with him. The rifle squad leader, a short, solid man with hard eyes watched them and spoke quietly into his radio.

Another dismount stood to the side and watched as well.

We were quiet. There was no yelling, no boasting or laughing. No one mocked the Hajji or teased his family. Most of the 
chatter in English came from the headset of the radio nestled against the squad leader's ear.

I walked upstairs and up to the landing behind the yellow door. There were only five or six holes in the back wall behind the
 doorframe. Sgt. Hise really should re-zero that weapon. Some items had been knocked over, either by the dismounts as they
 searched or by someone quickly leaving that location. Just as I was about to turn and leave I noticed a woman's black purse 
peeking out from under an overturned milk crate. Sitting on top of it was a compact with mirror.

I left it where it lay and went down to the storage room. I walked past the woman and up to the children.

They sat against the back wall in a little lump. I squatted down on my haunches and put my rifle across my knees. I cannot 
imagine what they must have thought of me.

There I was, the invader and occupier, not two meters away. Pale and quiet and slick with sweat, as they never seem to be. 
I bristled with the panoply of war.

Helmet, rifle, armor, with knife and pistol and pouches. Strange, hard smells of metal and propellant and oil. And stillness. 
Complete stillness. I did not say anything. I did not move but for my eyes. I looked at each of them I slowly studied them. 
One of them had done it. One of these children had been up at the top of the stairs, looking out the doorway down on the 
tank not so far away. They knew that their father fought the occupiers. He buried things behind the house and then, at night, 
either he or other men went out and planted the bombs which killed the occupiers. Maybe he boasted of it to them.

Maybe he only held things for other men. One of these children decided they could do it as well. Something small, but they c
ould fight the occupiers. So they would climb the stairs and use the

mirror to flash light at the occupiers. To blind them. To tease them and do a little to help the

fight.

And then a horrible snapping and snarling sound. Something hitting the wall near them, hard. Now above their heads near 
the ceiling, the same angry hissing and thudding. They fled and cowered in the storage room.

I knew what had happened. I knew it as clearly and completely as if I had been there and watched it happen. I think I 
grinned at them.

I wanted to take the interpreter into the room with me and tell them what they had done. To watch their faces as they l
earned what consequences were to come. The man would be taken away. He would not be coming back. We do not let
 bombers go. I wanted the children to know we might never have come to that house. Might never have turned up their 
street, stopped at their gate and pulled him away had they not decided to play a little game with a mirror and a

tank.

The infantry had been pulling box after box out of the ground from the hole behind the house. They stacked it all up in the 
courtyard. I left the children and the woman and walked out to see what had been found. By reason of my exalted rank 
(I certainly had never led a raid or catalogued a seized cache before) the task fell to me to sort out the items and 
document them. I passed the secretarial part of the job off on the squad leader. I limited my participation to opening 
up boxes and making sure we had pictures or everything. There were grenades and

fuses, primers and det (detonation) cord, wire and AK ammunition and one thing that nobody recognized but looked 
evil so we lumped it in as well.

I made sure the pictures were saved on the camera, shot some more of the hole and the house for good measure and 
then tossed it back to 2-2's gunner. I started to think about what documentation I would need to prepare in order to ensure 
that the Hajji stayed detained. It would have been easier to simply take him out front and shoot him in the head. Bodies

are always simple to explain.

We policed up the cache and the Hajji and took it all out front. I grabbed the interpreter and spoke to the woman. I told her we 
were taking the man. We would not harm him but if she wanted him back we needed to know who he worked with. She wept 
but could or would

not help us.

As we started to load 2-2 the families in the other houses all gathered at their gates and watched. At the gate to the house 
next door several teenaged girls started to wail. It was a singularly depressing sound. The man with them, probably the 
brother of the Hajji, walked towards us. I took the interpreter and headed him off.

He said the children were those of the man we were detaining and they wished to embrace him before we took him away. 
I told them no. I gave him the same offer I gave the woman. Help us and he can return. We would not harm the man, only 
question and hold him. He would not help either.

As the ramp on the Bradley latched shut the girl's wails reached a crescendo then dropped to sobs. I turned and walked away. 
Very dramatic. I wished I had a mustache to twirl or a monocle to adjust. Honestly, sometimes the melodrama just happens 
on its own.

I never spoke to the children in the house, which was probably a good thing. I was not feeling

very kindly at that moment. It would have been unkind to the interpreter to put him in the position of assisting me in rubbing 
salt into the wounds of children.

I am still a little perturbed that we failed to kill the little bastard when we had the chance.

More later.

Brian
-- 
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