No Man Left Behind

On the morning of April 9th, 2004, a large-scale ambush trapped a KBR convoy in the Abu Ghraib section of the city of Baghdad, Iraq.?Soldiers in the 1st Cavalry Division heard about this as the attack was underway; only a couple of miles from our Headquarters.?Two Soldiers and three KBR contractors were captured.?

Now the hunt was on.?

No stone was left unturned looking for those Americans.?Within minutes of being informed of missing Americans, massive numbers of our American and Coalition forces were out searching for them.?It did not matter to us that some of those were civilians.?We put our lives on the line for them.?

They were Americans, and we never leave Americans behind.?This code is not just part of our military culture but never leaving anyone behind is an American ethos.

Of the five captured, the two Soldiers and one of the KBR employees were murdered, and their bodies were later recovered.?One KBR employee escaped and was recovered 27 days later by U.S. forces.?And one KBR employee remains missing to this day and is presumed dead.?I remember their names; so will those there helping us search for them. One of these men, Keith M. Maupin, a U.S. Army soldier, was captured in the attack and later summarily executed. His photo is shown here.

Shortly after this incident, the U.S. media falsely reported on an attack in another part of Abu Ghraib.?A U.S. main battle tank, the M1A1, was knocked out by a Rocket Propelled Grenade, but the crew survived.?The tank crew abandoned their vehicle and quickly loaded into other nearby vehicles.?This action was standard procedure.

AH-64 Apache attack helicopters overhead warned residents not to approach the tank.?There were secure radios inside that must not fall into insurgent hands.?As insurgents swarmed the tank looking for our Soldiers to kidnap but also to steal the radios, the Apache pilots took them under fire and killed several.

It was reported in the press that attack helicopters fired on innocent Iraqis attempting to rescue the American tank crew.?Misreporting ground truth was typical media malfeasance.?There was never a correction made about the erroneous report.?This incident could easily have turned into a kidnapping and another hunt for Americans.?We were fortunate this time.?

Every man and woman in our American military knows that we have their backs.?We will never abandon them or those that work for us.?We will never leave anyone behind, regardless of the costs.?That is what makes us Americans.

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Retiring from the U.S. Army in 2014, Brigadier General Doug Satterfield originally entered the military in 1974 on active duty as a Private.? In 2021, he published an account of his first of three combat tours of duty in Iraq; “Our Longest Year in Iraq.”? Doug is an American patriot, family man, Christian, and advocate for homeless Veterans.