U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan commemorate comrades killed in chopper crash

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Posted 8:52AM on Tuesday, January 22, 2002

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - American soldiers dabbed at their eyes and hugged Tuesday as a military chaplain invoked the memory of two Marines killed in the Afghan campaign's second deadly air crash in less than two weeks. Clad in grease-stained khaki coveralls, with M-16 assault rifles slung behind their backs, the dead men's comrades joined other soldiers based at Kandahar to commemorate the victims of Sunday's crash. Staff Sgt. Walter F. Cohee III, 26, of Wicomico, Md., and Sgt. Dwight J. Morgan, 24, of Mendocino, Calif., were killed when their CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter crashed while on a resupply mission. Their remains arrived Monday at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. Five other Marines were injured when the chopper came down after taking off from Bagram air base outside the capital, Kabul. Military officials said the crash appeared to be caused by mechanical failure. Soldiers gathered Tuesday under a giant American flag in the battle-pocked airport terminal -- the same hall used for the memorial service for seven Marines killed in the Jan. 9 crash of a refueling tanker in the mountains of southwestern Pakistan. The cause remains under investigation. That was the worst single casualty toll for U.S. forces in the Afghan campaign. America's battle against terrorism is going "to take blood spilled by good people," Navy Chaplain Cmdr. Joseph Scordo said. The gathering joined in the Marine Hymn, "Eternal Father," singing, "Oh hear us when we lift our prayer for those in peril in the air." "You have given all ... a nation could ask of you," said Marine Maj. Zeke Williams, of Memphis, Tenn., swallowing hard as he delivered his eulogy. Several men who knew the victims swiped at their eyes with wool-gloved hands and embraced after the service. Thousands of soldiers -- Marines, members of the Army's 101st Airborne Division and military from other nations with the U.S.-led Afghanistan coalition -- are at Kandahar, the main American base in the country. It also is where Taliban and al-Qaida suspects are confined temporarily before most of them are flown to the Navy base in Guantanamo, Cuba. Army spokesman Maj. Ignacio Perez said 244 detainees remained at Kandahar Tuesday. The number of detainees at the base in Cuba rose to 158 with Monday's arrival of 14 battle-scarred fighters on stretchers. U.S. officials also said John Walker Lindh, an American found fighting alongside the Taliban, likely would be flown Tuesday from his confinement on a Navy ship to the United States for his trial on a charge of conspiracy to kill U.S. citizens. That charge carries a life sentence. Lindh is being sent to the United States -- and not Guantanamo -- because he is an American citizen. U.S. officials would only say Walker would be flown from the amphibious attack ship USS Bataan cruising the Arabian Sea and transferred to another flight for the trip to the United States. The officials spoke on condition they not be named. In Washington, U.S. officials have said Lindh would be handed over to the Department of Justice and the federal court district in northern Virginia, where Zacarias Moussaoui is awaiting trial for alleged complicity in the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Lindh, a 20-year-old Californian who converted to Islam four years ago, allegedly trained at an al-Qaida camp in Afghanistan. He was captured in November in the siege of Kunduz and survived the bloody prison uprising by Taliban and al-Qaida members near Mazar-e-Sharif in which CIA operative Johnny "Mike" Spann was killed. His anticipated transfer comes as the United States faces growing domestic and international criticism over its treatment of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. In Los Angeles, a federal judge was scheduled to hear a petition from U.S. civil rights advocates Tuesday challenging those detentions and demanding that the U.S. government bring the suspects before a court and define the charges. In Afghanistan, the search for Taliban and al-Qaida fugitives continued Monday when U.S. special forces raided a village near Khost and seized four people. The operation, confirmed by Afghan sources, took place in the area south of Kabul where Army Sgt. 1st Class Nathan Ross Chapman was killed in a Jan. 4 ambush. His was the first U.S. combat death. Reflecting Afghanistan's continued dangers, a U.N.-appointed monitoring group warned that Taliban and al-Qaida supporters could possess missiles capable of delivering conventional, chemical or nuclear warheads over distances of up to nearly 190 miles. Even though it has been routed, the Taliban regime still possesses "the means to stage an uprising," the monitoring group said. Separately, the United Nations said armed men looted a warehouse full of humanitarian supplies last week in northern Afghanistan -- the second time in three days that humanitarian supplies were pilfered. In Tokyo, representatives of the United States and more than 80 countries and international organizations pledged more than $4.5 billion to help reconstruct Afghanistan after 23 years of war. Much of that aid came from the European Union, Japan, Iran and the United States. However, the commitments fell short of the $10 billion that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said would be needed over five years. Still, interim government leader Hamid Karzai was satisfied, saying Tuesday he couldn't wait to tell Afghans "the good news." Afghanistan also won pledges of another $27.2 million to help clear the nation's land mines, a State Department official said.