Pfc.Patrick Miller-completely forgotten HERO in the Lynch story

I couldn't remember his name. This took some looking around but we need to keep him in mind and also realize that this is what good training does. This is in no means meant to deride Jesscia Lynch.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Miller_%28soldier%29

Private First Class Patrick Miller was a mechanic, a member of the US Army 507th Maintenance Company, and became a POW in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He was awarded the Silver Star for valor.

Prior to his capture, Miller had stood his ground firing at the Iraqis with a malfunctioning weapon, feeding bullets into it by hand to protect two wounded comrades. A U.S. Army press release said Miller jumped from his vehicle and began firing on a mortar position that he believed was about to open fire on his convoy.

After he was captured, he was repeatedly questioned about radio frequencies that were written on pieces of paper inside his helmet. "Thinking on his feet, Pfc. Miller told his captors that they were prices for water pumps," the release said. "Disgusted, the captors threw frequencies and his helmet into the fire."

For these actions he was awarded the Silver Star the third-highest military award for heroism in combat. Along with the Silver Star, Patrick Miller also received a Purple Heart and Prisoner of War medal on July 2, 2003, during an Independence Day celebration at Fort Bliss, Texas.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/11/06/60minutes/main582354.shtml

Iraqi bullets pounded Miller's truck, which also carried Sgt. James Riley and Pfc. Brandon Sloan.

"I knew that we were taking a lot of incoming just from the sounds that were coming around us," Miller says. "It was bouncing off the trucks, bouncin' off the hood. I went to stick my hand out the window to adjust the mirror so I could see 'em comin' from behind. And as I got my hand right to to the window, the mirror just shattered."

At that moment a bullet hit Sloan in his forehead, killing him instantly. "He just tensed up and slumped over. Didn't make a sound or nothing," Miller recalls. He kept driving. "You had to. You couldn't stop and try to take care of him."

He says, "It just felt like a real bad war movie. You were actually seeing people die in front of you."

Bullets then ripped into his truck's transmission, and it lost power. Miller and Riley jumped out and ran forward to where Lynch's Humvee had slammed into the tractor-trailer. Lynch was unconscious and appeared to be dead. All four others inside were killed.

"And it was just like a mangled mess of equipment and everything," MIller says. "I figured there was no way that anybody could survive something like that."

Army specialists Shoshana Johnson and Edgar Hernandez also believed everyone in the Humvee had been killed. They were in the tractor-trailer that Lynch's Humvee had smashed into. All the American vehicles had broken down, but Miller thought they might still escape the ambush in an Iraqi dump truck parked 50 yards up the road.

If there were no keys in the ignition, he says, he would have hot-wired it. Is that something he knows how to do? "I'd have learned really fast," he says.

Johnson and Hernandez were taking cover in their tractor-trailer. Their weapons had jammed and they were pinned down. But Miller ran on toward the dump truck.

"She yells 'Miller! Get down here. You're gonna get hit,'" Miller says. "And I said 'I gotta go.' And I just kept going."

Johnson recalls, "I thought it was going to be the end for all of us."

Johnson was shot in the ankles; Miller took a bullet in his arm. He says there were "a whole bunch" of Iraqis firing on them. "All I could see was the bullets that were hitting the dirt around my feet."

Just when it seemed the situation couldn't get any worse, it did. Miller saw a group of Iraqis setting up a mortar position in front of the dump truck. He says it could have wiped them all out.

To prevent them from firing, Miller dove behind a horseshoe-shaped mount of dirt called a berm, across the highway from the Iraqis. But it was seven Iraqis against one American -- seven Iraqis who were in that mortar pit just 25 yards away.

Miller hadn't fired a weapon for seven months, and he admits he wasn't the best marksman. He was an Army mechanic, and when he'd taken his first marksmanship test, he'd failed it.

So what did he do? "One guy, like, jumped up to where I could see him, and he had a mortar round in his hand, getting ready to drop it in the tube," he says. "And as he jumped up, I just raised my rifle up and shot, and he fell over."

It was the first shot he fired in the incident. The lousy marksman hit home.

But after that first shot, his rifle jammed. He had to pound on it with the palm of his hand, after every shot, to get the next bullet loaded into the chamber. He kept on re-loading and shooting. "I was kind of getting a rhythm down, count like seconds and then look up," he explains. "And you could see somebody else trying to load it. So, I was starting to count, and when I'd get to the number, I'd look up. And somebody else would be trying to load it, and I'd shoot. I did that probably seven times total. I counted the last time, and when I looked up, there wasn't nobody there."

Everybody knows about Jessica Lynch, but nobody knows about Patrick.

"And he did an amazing thing," Johnson says. "He saved our lives. If that mortar had hit that vehicle we were underneath, we'd be gone. And so would Jessica, because it would have been a chain reaction. It had all that fuel, we'd be dead."

Iraqi gunmen surrounded the group and took them prisoner. They went into captivity still believing that Lynch had been killed back in the Humvee. When U.S. Marines came to their rescue 21 days later, they were astonished to learn that their friend had also survived -- but surprised that she'd become a national hero.

Lynch apparently agrees with Johnson and Hernandez that Miller was the hero of the whole operation. Does her $1 million book deal and television movie bother Miller? "Mmm, somewhat," he answers. "But I don't want to get all into that." Would he turn down a $1 million book deal? "Oh no, I'd have to think about it," he laughs.

For now, Miller has been working anonymously in the motor-pool at Fort Carson in Colorado. Three months after the crash, The Washington Post referred to him thusly in an article about Jessica Lynch: "One soldier whose name could not be learned, took cover behind a berm. Iraqi soldiers were on the other side in a mortar pit. He killed a half dozen of them, a defense official said. Soon though, he was surrounded by a couple of dozen armed Iraqis and is believed to have been killed on the spot. 'He didn't have a chance,' said the official."

rescued Jessica Lynch a full day before they did, but they waited another day, so that the film crew was ready to film the rescue. Hell the terrorists could have been doing anything to the poor child during that 24 hours, but the filming of the rescue was more important than her safety was, to the military.

I remember the story breaking and even I bought into it...for a while. Yep I got to work and fired up the DU and what did I find? Someone posted an Guardian story on this which was basically the AP story + a quote way down at the bottom from a British military PR officer who had seen all 12 hours of footage they had taped ....he was glad that the British military didn't have anything to do with this story.

Hmmm now how could that be? Well as usuall the netroots had the real story a week before the Lauers of this world were forced to read it on the air. Hell Bravo (owned by GE Universal too) had a "The Real rescue" special in which we were all treated to even more of the footage.

THEN the quotes from the family started coming out and then they were quoting as saying that they were told not to say anything more. My relatives in WV didn't even know where Palestine WV was but I knew one thing-they picked the wrong girl she wasn't going to simply lie for them especially since it stepped all over her dead best friend and the rest of her friends.

Amazing. The military and the press were caught redhanded.

Last note-I went to a family wedding in WV right when all this happened and one of my conservative uncles was going on and on about Brooks the black officer "He is really sharp. We are going to see a lot about that guy in the future" and so on. Well Brooks (rank?) has not been heard from since that I know of. They had to take him off the screen as he would always be connected to this story which in all fairness he probably just read.

and to think the US could have had an incredible TRUE story and instead opted to lie.

:kick:

This occurred only a couple days after the US started the invasion. It was the military's fault for allowing a non-combat maintenance unit to be unprotected. Yes, they made a wrong turn, but they still should not have been on their own.

there was also clearly a failure in command to get them updated routes and maps. Also the Captain got outside of radio limits.

I said that about the training because clearly Miller had paid attention. Having been in the Army we joke about some the familiarization training but they really are the best trained in the world (overall from top to bottom).

They should have been firing and maintaining their weapons systems more than say...never too.

4 SOLDIERS INVOLVED IN THE JESSICA LYNCH RESCUE DIED SUSPICIOUSLY...THERE WERE 6 RESCUERS..IN TOTAL..WHO WENT INSIDE THE HOSPITAL./.I WILL POST THE FOUR...

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http://greenvilleonline.com/news/2003/07/07/200307079664.htm

Iraq war veteran killed in Highway 11 wreck
Posted Monday, July 7, 2003 - 3:24 am




By Paul Alongi
STAFF WRITER
palongi@greenvillenews.com


Josh Daniel Speer, a 21-year-old Marine who died in a single-vehicle wreck Sunday, poses with his weapons in Iraq.


A Marine who was home for the first time since fighting in Iraq died Sunday morning when the vehicle he was driving veered off State 11 and crashed into some trees, authorities said.
Josh Daniel Speer, 21, died instantly about 8 a.m. while en route to his fiancee's house, said Kent Dill, a Greenville County deputy coroner.

Speer was a member of a unit that helped rescue Jessica Lynch, the Army private captured by Iraqis near Nasiriyah, said Capt. Shawn Turner, a corps spokesman. Details of the unit's role weren't available, he said.

Speer arrived at Camp Lejeune last Saturday after steaming back to the United States aboard the USS Kearsarge. The family said he was back home in Marietta for the first time Thursday and spent the weekend enjoying time with them.





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Wednesday, October 22, 2003

Marine survives Iraq, only to die in America
S.F. man is shot dead by unknown gunman at family party in Long Beach
Jim Herron Zamora, Chronicle Staff Writer

Marine Cpl. Sok Khak Ung survived five months in Iraq, avoiding snipers, mortar attacks and suicide bombers. He helped rescue Pfc. Jessica Lynch and later received a Purple Heart after he was wounded in the leg by shrapnel.

But Ung, 22, of San Francisco, did not live even that long after returning to America. He was shot to death last weekend while singing and rapping at a family barbecue in Long Beach. Police said an unknown gunman reached over the fence and sprayed the backyard with bullets.



This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle


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Saturday, October 4, 2003
Suspect in motel slaying found dead
DAVID L. TEIBEL and IRENE HSIAO

Tucson Citizen



A soldier who recently served in Iraq and was sought in the killing of a man outside a Tucson motel this week was found dead in the San Diego area, an apparent suicide, Tucson police said.
The man, Spc. Kyle Edward Williams, 21, was sought on a first-degree murder warrant in the killing Wednesday of Noah P. Gamez, 21, of Tucson.

Sgt. Judy Altieri, a Tucson Police Department spokeswoman, said she did not know whether Williams knew he was being sought in the killing.

"He survived Iraq to come back to this," said his mother, Vicki Williams, when reached by telephone last night in Poway, Calif.

Williams, who worked in technical support for a Patriot missile group, had been with 507th Maintenance Company, from Fort Bliss, Texas. His unit returned to the United States on June 15, Altieri said.


SNIP;

Williams left no suicide note, Altieri said.

Detectives had contacted Williams' family in San Diego in an effort to find him. The family told detectives he had not arrived and was overdue.

Gamez had broken a window on Williams' Jeep and was stealing items, including an ice chest, Wednesday morning outside the soldier's room at the Super 8 Motel, 1000 S. Freeway Drive, Altieri said.

Williams left his room to check out of the motel and saw Gamez taking things from the Jeep, Altieri said.

Williams fired six shots at Gamez, hitting him twice in the torso, as he was leaving, Altieri said, adding that Gamez was not armed.



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http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/dmtapper.htm

David M. Tapper
Petty Officer First Class, United States Navy
No. 615-03
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Aug 21, 2003
(703)697-5131(media)
(703)428-0711(public/industry)
DoD Identifies Navy Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today that Petty Officer First Class David M. Tapper, 32, of Camden County, New Jersey, died of wounds received in action August 20, 2003 in Afghanistan.

Often called upon to conduct the most harrowing missions, Tapper took part in the April rescue of wounded POW Jessica Lynch, then helped recover the bodies of nine American soldiers buried near the Iraqi hospital where she was held, according to friends and the Tapper family.

After serving in Iraq for two months, Tapper, a father of four, returned to Camden County for a visit during a six-week leave in early summer. Tapper, who had spent most of his 13-year naval career as a SEAL, was reluctant to return to the war zone.

"He said it was too soon," said a sister, who spoke for the family. "He wanted to stay with his children and spend more time with his family in Atco."

But, duty called again last month, this time sending him to Afghanistan, where an increasingly overlooked and vastly dangerous mission to rout the Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists grinds on.

Tapper, 32, died there Wednesday while conducting combat operations in a lawless province near the Pakistani border - an area where the military believes the terrorists are operating.

Friends here said Tapper was shot in the back during an ambush. He died later at a hospital at Bagram Air Base, the Navy said.

"David fought a good fight and accomplished his mission in life," said the sister, who asked not to be identified by name. "We know that he is in Heaven and it was the Lord's will to take him there."

A Navy spokesman declined to discuss Tapper's unit or its mission in Afghanistan.

Tapper's wife and four children live in Virginia Beach, Va., where his unit was stationed, but he has a large family in the Atco area, where he grew up and graduated from Edgewood High School in 1989.

What adds to the strangeness of it is that they all died within such a short time span.