A journey of hope, grief
Helping others as soldiers searched
BY HOWARD WILKINSON
Keith Maupin knew it in his gut.
Knew it from the moment in April four years ago when he saw the video on the cable news. Knew it when he saw the coal-black smoke pouring from burning fuel trucks; knew it from the chaos and horror racing across the screen.
Somehow, his boy Matt was involved.
"I didn't know how, but there was no question in my mind - Matt was there," Keith Maupin said last week, standing in front of the Yellow Ribbon Support Center in Eastgate while, inside, a team of Army officers scurried around, fielding phone calls and tapping on laptop computers.
But what neither he nor the then-20-year-old soldier's mother, Carolyn, knew at that moment was what the next four years would hold for them and the thousands who supported them.
Anxiety. Heartbreak. Sometimes anger; more often, love. And, always, above all, hope.
Hope that some fine morning, their boy - their big, strong soldier with the broad back and broad smile - would walk through that door, home in the arms of those who loved him at last.
"Love never loses its way home." It was the mantra of Maupins and thousands of others whose hearts were pulled into their ordeal, the words printed on thousands of cards and badges and posters bearing Matt Maupin's face.
There will be a homecoming now - not the one hoped for, but a homecoming nonetheless. A homecoming for a hero whose legacy should live on for a long time to come.
Word came last week, when a three-star general came to the Maupins and told them the news: their son's remains, found by U.S. soldiers March 20 in a farm area about 15 miles northwest of Baghdad, had been positively identified through DNA testing.
'IT JUST HAPPENED TO US'
There were times, of course, when the Maupins would ask why it was their son, captured and missing and unheard from for years, despite the thousands of his fellow soldiers digging through the Iraq dust and knocking down doors to find him. Why them, of all the thousands of families?
But they know, in their hearts, there is no answer to that.
"It could have been anyone," Keith Maupin said.
"It just happened to us."
They were like most families who have sent loved ones to this war - hardworking, decent families who loved their country, loved their children and feared for their safety. Keith and Carolyn Maupin divorced years ago, but they have been inseparable partners and each other's best friends over the last four, tough years.
Just as Matt Maupin was just like the many thousands of young men who have, since 9/11, donned the uniform of a soldier, sailor, airman or Marine.
Not unlike his younger brother, Micah, a U.S. Marine whom the military decided not to deploy to Iraq because of the disappearance of his brother.
For many, Matt Maupin became the face of the war in Iraq.
He enlisted in October 2002 - the Glen Este High School grad had been working at the Eastgate Sam's Club and attending classes at the University of Cincinnati. He knew it was a good way to serve his country while earning money to finish his college education.
He was first assigned to the Dayton-based705th Transportation Co., but when the 705th was mobilized to go to Iraq, Matt Maupin had just completed basic training so he was held back.
Then he was re-assigned as a truck driver in the 724th Transportation Co., an Army Reserve unit from Bartonville, Ill., just southwest of Peoria.
The 705th would spend the first year of the Iraq war running supplies on the same routes the 724th used when it took over in March 2004.
By the time the 724th arrived in Iraq, private contractors like KBR, then owned by Halliburton, had been hired to drive the trucks. Soldiers from units like the 724th were being assigned to ride along as escorts for civilian drivers.
On April 9, 2004, Pfc. Maupin was one of 10 soldiers from the 724th assigned to provide security for a 26-vehicle convoy that was to haul fuel from Camp Anaconda near Balad 40 miles to the south to Baghdad International Airport.
Sgt. Michael Bailey, then a 47-year-old veteran platoon leader in the 724th, was to lead his men on the second convoy, but he remembers seeing Maupin that morning.
Bailey remembers telling Maupin what he told every young soldier going into harm's way: "Stay alert, and watch yourself out there."
No amount of caution, no amount of alertness could have prevented what was to come that day.
At the time, it was probably the most dangerous 40 miles in Iraq.
That morning, as the convoy neared the Baghdad airport and reached the intersection of military supply routes Tampa and Sword they ran head on into a hail of gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades coming from both sides of the road. Unlike most convoy attacks, where insurgents strike quickly and go, this one was massive.
The trucks labored through fire for five miles, through incredible chaos and bloodshed.
By the time it was over, one soldier from 724th, Spc. Gregory Goodrich, was dead. The body of another, Sgt. Elmer Kraus, was found nearby a few days later.
Six of the KBR drivers were killed; nine more wounded. Of the 43 men in the convoy, 25 were killed or wounded. It was a bloodbath.
It quickly became clear that one soldier was missing - Pfc. Matt Maupin.
By the end of the day, his family back home in Union Township was told that their son was, in military parlance, DUSTWUN - Duty Status, Whereabouts Unknown.
Since that day, many have questioned whether that convoy should have been on that road that day.
According to a U.S. Army report, an unidentified soldier relayed orders from the 13th Corps Support command to approach the Baghdad airport by the north gate.
Three minutes later, the report said, the same soldier sent another e-mail to the convoy's military escort saying the north gate was closed. He mistakenly sent the e-mail to himself. It might have stopped the convoy because they couldn't get to the airport.
Last year, the Los Angeles Times reported that senior KBR managers rejected the advice of their own security people and ordered that convoy to speed through the five-mile combat zone.
The families and some survivors of the convoy sued KBR, which denied the charges. The lawsuit was dismissed by a Houston judge last year, but the plaintiffs are appealing. The Maupins did not join that lawsuit.
THE TERRIBLE VIDEOS
A week after the attack, the Maupins, and the rest of the nation, were horrified to see a video that had popped up on al-Jazeera, the Arab news network, showing Matt Maupin, in desert uniform, crouched against a wall - alive, but clearly scared, surrounded by hooded men carrying automatic rifles.
The anxiety continued to build.
In late June, a new video surfaced - a dark and grainy one showing a man in what appeared to be a U.S. military uniform being shot in the head by militants, with a voiceover saying it is Maupin.
The Maupins were shown the video by Pentagon officials and insisted it was not their son.
'THESE WERE GOOD PEOPLE'
They had a formidable ally in their quest for information from military officials - their congressman, Rob Portman.
Portman, who later went to work in the Bush White House, had closer ties to the Bush administration than just about any member of Congress. He could pick up the phone and reach everyone from the president to Vice President Dick Cheney and then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the first try.
He went with Keith and Carolyn Maupin to the Pentagon that summer on their first of many meetings with military brass. The video, Portman said, was played and examined in great detail; military officials were looking for any sign that might tell them who the man being executed was.
"I remember them asking the family about Matt,'' Portman said. "Was that the way he sat? Did he slump over like that? What about his physical build?"
Nearly two months later, the Pentagon announced its finding: The video was inconclusive as to whether it was Matt Maupin.
Portman remembered the day in April 2004 when the Maupins were told of their son's disappearance and he went to Carolyn Maupin's home in Union Township.
"I walked up that driveway scared to death," Portman said. "What do you say to people at a time like that? What can you say? But I learned very quickly. These were good people. And I made up my mind right there I would do everything in my power to help."
While the Maupins grew frustrated at times with the lack of information coming out of Baghdad and Washington at first, the lines of communication have been better over the past two years.
Keith Maupin, in his meetings with Pentagon officials, has always had a very direct message: "He may walk off a plane or he may be carried off a plane, but you're bringing my boy home."
They have had several meetings with President Bush, both here and in Washington. Every Friday night at 6 p.m., the phone would ring at the Maupins' Yellow Ribbon Support Center. It would be an officer of the Pentagon's POW/MIA office, offering a weekly update.
But the most gratifying thing of all, Keith Maupin said, was that over the past four years, both he and Carolyn have met hundreds of soldiers who have returned from Iraq after participating in missions to find their son.
"I've had every one of them tell me the same thing," Keith Maupin said. "They say, 'We haven't kicked down the right door yet, but we will.' And they mean it."
One them was Sgt. Bailey, the platoon leader from Matt Maupin's unit. Since the 724th came home in February 2005, he has returned to Iraq twice - voluntarily - to join in searches for the soldier the 724th left behind.
'There has not been a day that has gone by in four years that I haven't had that young man's face in my head," said the 51-year-old soldier. "He has been with me always."
Another is Lt. Col. Steve Stover, a public affairs officer for the Multi-National Force in Baghdad. This is his second tour in Iraq. On his first, he said, he participated in Matt Maupin searches.
"I really hope people back home understand that we would never, ever have given up on Sgt. Maupin," Stover said. "That's not the way we do things. We leave no one behind."
For the Maupins, knowing men like Bailey, Stover and their brothers-in-arms has helped them cope through an ordeal that is every parent's worst nightmare.
But so, too, has the Yellow Ribbon Support Center, the little storefront office in a strip mall in Eastgate where they have spent much of their free time over the past four years.
There, amidst the yellow ribbons and the photos of their son and hundreds of other service men and women that line the walls, they have done work that is certainly therapeutic for them - boxing "care packages" for thousands of troops overseas, organizing fund-raising events for their scholarship fund, and organizing a drive that resulted in the creation two years ago of a Matt Maupin Computer Lab at Camp Anaconda, where soldiers can go to stay in touch with home.
For the past two years, on the anniversary of their son's capture, they have hosted over 1,000 people at a dinner-dance at the Oasis Conference Center near Loveland, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for college scholarships in the names of their son and the dozens of area servicemen killed in Iraq.
While they wait for word on when their son will return, they will do it again Wednesday.
The Maupins say the work of the Yellow Ribbon Support Center will go on.
"My boy's coming home; no one can hurt him ever again," Keith Maupin said. "But it's never been just about Matt. It's about all of them over there. 140,000 of them. We'll work just as hard for them."
©2008, Enquirer.com