WP: A Unit's Volatile Year at War

A Unit's Volatile Year at War
For Men and Families of the 7th Cavalry's 5th Battalion, Iraq Tour Was 'Long, Dull Day' Punctuated by Violence

By Steve Fainaru
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, December 13, 2005; Page A01

BALAD, Iraq Long before he came to Iraq, Spec. Russell Nahvi hoped to save the world. In a spiral-bound notebook filled with math equations, he jotted his secret yearnings: "I PRAY one day I can make the world proud of me. I hope I can restore an unknown peace to wartorn nations, peoples, families, friends."

Nahvi's ambitions led him to a dark road on the outskirts of this town, where, on a patrol Oct. 19 a bomb hidden in a pothole dismembered him and incinerated his Humvee. Two other Americans were also killed. One soldier survived: a platoon sergeant who managed to wrench himself out of the vehicle, flames rolling off him.

Afterward, the Pentagon tersely attributed the soldiers' deaths to "enemy indirect fire." An officer handed Nahvi's mother, Nancy, a form asking if she wanted her 24-year-old son's body parts returned if they were recovered. President Bush sent his parents a three-paragraph condolence letter. It contained a typo: "God less you."

"It was just a grunt's death," said Nancy Nahvi, an Arlington, Tex., nurse, her voice tinged with bitterness.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/12/AR2005121201707.html