The 457th Transportation Battalion recently honored captured Blue Devil Soldier Sgt. Matt Maupin, who has been missing for one year, by naming a Battalion Conference room in his memory at Camp Anaconda, Iraq.
INTERNATIONAL ZONE, BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 19, 2005
Just more than one year ago, on April 9, 2004, a convoy of fuel tankers driven by Halliburton employees and Soldiers from the 724th Transportation Company was ambushed by insurgents west of Baghdad. Over half of the 40-plus men in the convoy were wounded or killed. Then-Pfc. Kenneth Matthew "Matt" Maupin was among the three men captured. If he is still alive, he is a year older and is now a sergeant, but he is still missing.Ê
A week later, on April 16, Al-Jazeera aired a video of Maupin, not visibly wounded but surrounded by five masked men armed with automatic weapons. It was the last time he was positively identified. A couple of weeks later, Maupin was promoted to specialist, and he was promoted again to the rank of sergeant earlier this month. A video on Al-Jazeera on June 28, 2004, showed a figure, purportedly Maupin, who was shot and knocked into a grave. The image quality was so poor that military investigators, as well as MaupinÕs parents, who could only view still photos taken from the video, were not convinced that it was indeed Maupin.Ê
Batavia, Ohio, a small village east of Cincinnati, fervently prays for the return of its native son. His parents, Keith and Carolyn, refuse to believe he is dead. The town is draped with yellow ribbons and signs so that Maupin will not be forgotten. His younger brother, Micah, a Marine stationed in San Diego, wants to volunteer for duty in Iraq, but his mother has asked him to wait until her older sonÕs fate is determined.
To raise awareness for their son and to improve the life of other service members in Iraq and Afghanistan, Keith and Carolyn founded the Yellow Ribbon Support Center, a nonprofit organization, which has shipped an estimated 2,000 care packages to deployed service members. Keith has given up his full-time job to work at the center.Ê
"We don't want him to be forgotten," Carolyn Maupin told The (Louisville) Courier-Journal. "I am just afraid that if they move on, then what will we say when he shows up alive and we aren't there waiting for him?"
The Soldiers of the 724th Trans Co., minus Maupin, returned from their deployment in late February.Ê
"I am an old Ranger, and we donÕt leave a Soldier behind," Sgt. Mike Bailey, a fellow Soldier of the 724th, told The Courier-Journal. "I don't think the Army will, either."
The former student at University of Cincinnati, who enlisted in the Army Reserve to earn money for college, is officially listed as "missing-captured," because there has been no definite proof of his existence, or death, since the April 16, 2004 videotape. A review board met on April 6 to review the status of his case, and while its decision is not expected for another week, his status could remain the same or be changed to "deceased-body not recovered." The U.S. is still searching for him and Timothy Bell, a Halliburton employee and native of Mobile, Ala. who is also missing from the convoy.Ê
Maupin is the only member of the U.S. military classified as missing in both Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. In January, the military recovered the remains of another Halliburton employee killed in the Good Friday ambush near the site. Maj. Gen. William Brandenburg, the commander of U.S.-run prisons in Iraq, credited the intelligence that led to the grave from interrogations conducted at Abu Ghraib prison. The same intelligence also led to a raid on a local village and capture of a number of insurgents.Ê
Another Halliburton employee who was captured in the ambush, Thomas Hamill, escaped from his captors after 24 days. He recently co-wrote a book, "Escape in Iraq: The Thomas Hamill Story," about his captivity. Hamill met MaupinÕs parents at the homecoming ceremonies for the 724th.
"I told them we have to keep Matt's name out there and to never stop believing," Hamill told the Cincinnati Enquirer. "Some people thought I would never come home alive either."
The U.S. military has not forgotten Maupin and intends to find him.Ê
"I want to make sure everyone is clear about this Ð we do not abandon our comrades," said Brig Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, chief of Army Public Affairs, about the recent board review of MaupinÕs case. "We will not abandon Matt Maupin, or his family."
"While Matt is in a captured status the operational commands keep looking for anything that would lead them to him. We cannot, and must not, detail those efforts, but we are certain at the Department of the Army that the operational commanders are active. Remember that Soldiers live by an ethos that includes an all-important tenet - 'I will never leave a fallen comrade.'"
By Maj. Patricia C. Anderson
Command Information Officer