Lance Cpl. Jason T. Little Hometown
Soldiers lose brave battle to survive
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- Published: Sunday, November 12, 2006, 8:03 AM Updated: Monday, February 04, 2008, 10:20 AM
Soldiers lose brave battle to survivePublished: Monday, November 13, 2006, 8:23 AM Updated: Monday, February 04, 2008, 8:34 AMKatie Youmans knew when she packed her bags for San Antonio that her husband, Josh, had been severely burned in an explosion in Iraq. So the day after Thanksgiving last year, nearly seven weeks after giving birth to daughter MacKenzie, she and her baby girl set off to see her husband. Youmans thought she was prepared, but she could not have known the kind of heartbreak the next year would bring. Her life was one of many that dragged into a months-long devastating tailspin after Nov. 21, 2005. That was the day an improvised explosive device in Iraq ripped through a Humvee carrying five Army National Guard members from Michigan. Pfc. John W. Dearing was killed instantly. Horribly burned, Sgt. Spencer Akers, Sgt. Matthew Webber, Sgt. Duane Dreasky and Sgt. Joshua Youmans were left fighting for their lives. 'He was my only son' Around the same time Katie Youmans was rushing to her husband's side, three Army officers including a chaplain were visiting Dearing's family in the Detroit suburb of Hazel Park. The soldier's father, also named John, was driving a furniture truck with a colleague when his wife, Katherine, the younger John's stepmother, called his cellphone. She broke into sobs, and he barely heard the voice of an Army officer come on the line saying, "Your son was killed." "I threw my phone across the truck," he remembered. "I had one more delivery left. There was no way I could do it. "He was my only son." The elder Dearing, a Vietnam veteran, remembers walking into a bingo hall to find his mother, Mary, to tell her the news. "I collapsed," he said. "She collapsed. I was proud of him. I just really didn't want him to go." The younger John Dearing's widow, Amanda, was just 19 when she got the news her husband of five months had died, just two months after his 21st birthday. She couldn't stop crying. For Christmas 2005, the elder Dearing got a golden retriever that was born the day his son died. He named him Chipper, after his son's favorite Atlanta Braves player, Chipper Jones. And through his grief, Dearing hoped for the recovery of his son's four comrades. To Texas for treatment The four surviving soldiers were airlifted from their base near al-Habbaniyah, first to Landstuhl Regional Army Medical Center in Germany, then to the burn unit at Brooke Army Medical Center in Fort Sam Houston, Texas. Isolated in intensive care rooms, the men lay swaddled in bandages, some barely recognizable with more than half of their bodies and faces burned. The 450-bed Texas facility has 40 beds dedicated to the Institute of Surgical Research Burn Unit, the only one of its kind in the Department of Defense. Nearly 600 burn victims from Iraq have been treated there, many with third- and fourth-degree wounds that have seared through layers of tissue. "It's almost exclusively from IEDs at this point," said Maj. Sandra Wanek, a burn trauma surgeon at Brooke who helped treat the four soldiers. Treatment and chances of recovery depend on the injury, Wanek said. First, burned tissue, a potential host for bacteria and fungus, is removed and replaced with tissue transplanted from any unburned skin. "Burn care is extremely painful, but these guys rarely complain. They're thankful. By and large, they don't feel bad about what happened to them. They feel like it was worth it. They are very brave," Wanek said. "We've had some good saves and some horrible losses. I'm from Michigan, so I knew where all of these guys were from. It's hard, because you get pretty involved with their families." Without the protection of skin, organs including the heart and lungs are at risk for infection - the biggest threat. Badly burned soldiers are so vulnerable that wives, mothers and fathers wear face masks and gloves to see them in the ICU. "They look different, but whatever (families) imagined is almost worse in most cases than what they see," Wanek said. It is still too hard for Katie Youmans, 30, to talk about seeing her husband after the attack. He was severely burned, bandaged, frail and often medicated. He asked to see his wife, and sometimes for a cigarette (a request always denied). "I was like, 'This might be a good time to quit,'" Katie remembered. There was the day she told him, "Josh, the president is coming," and he gave her a look that said, "Yeah, right." Then, in walked President Bush. "I told you," Katie later told her astonished husband.
But even the president may not have been a match for another special visitor. "He asked one time when he would get to see his daughter," said Josh Youmans' mother, Becky, who spent three months in San Antonio, during which time her son mostly responded with nods and faded in and out of consciousness. Finally, the 5-month-old girl who was nicknamed "Diva" for stealing the show wherever she went at the hospital, got to meet her father. By the time little "Kenzie" was brought into the room, Josh Youmans' condition was declining. His eyes were closed, and he was comatose. It was a private moment for the family. "It was just important to me to have them both in the same room, at the same time and alive before he passed away," Katie said in an e-mail. The rest of those minutes are too hard to share with anyone who wasn't there, she said. 'A darn good soldier' On Dec. 8, the soldiers lost Akers, their team leader and oldest member. Nearly 75 percent of his body had been burned, a lot of it blistering his head and face. When they visited their son, Don and Carol Akers never had a chance to converse with him: He remained heavily sedated and on morphine until he died. Had he lived, it would have been a hard life, family members say. "He was a hero before he ever got there, as far as I was concerned," Don Akers said. "A darn good soldier." Spencer Akers was supposed to come home to Michigan and sign off on his first house over Thanksgiving. For weeks, his parents had trekked the 60 miles from their home in Tustin to Traverse City where Spencer worked, spotting "for sale" signs and checking real estate listings. They finally found it: a white, three-bedroom ranch nestled on nearly two acres of land. It was surrounded by big trees and on older property just like their son wanted. They e-mailed him a picture. "If you like it then I will like it," he wrote back. But days before his scheduled arrival, the Akerses learned he wasn't coming home. "All we knew was that he was conscious when they found him, and he knew he was in friendly hands," Don Akers said. Grief made worse Maj. Gen. Thomas Cutler, who grew up in Saginaw, where the unit was based, visited the three surviving soldiers with wife Chris in January. "As difficult as all of that was, they were still holding their heads up high and were proud to serve," he said. "I was honored to have known these men. They were truly American heroes." But one by one, hopes were shattered. Katie Youmans watched, preparing for the worst, as her husband's condition suddenly went downhill. After four months of hanging on, Josh Youmans died March 1. The week of the funeral, family members struggled with more than grief: A radical Kansas religious group that protested soldiers' funerals with hateful signs such as "Thank God for Dead Soldiers" was planning to come to Flushing. On the day of the funeral, though, hundreds of people supporting the family gathered outside, shielding them from the six Westboro Baptist Church members and holding signs such as "We love you Sgt. Youmans." "I can't thank them enough," Katie Youmans said. She and her mother, Cathie Draheim, later joined the fight in Michigan to pass a law banning such protests. "I've saved all of the articles about it," Katie said. "I'll tell (MacKenzie) her papa fought so they could do that, but it wasn't right." The last one falls In the tight-knit communities in southern Mecosta County, hundreds of people had rallied around Matthew Webber. A whole hometown was heartbroken when the former honor student died from complications from his burns April 27. A candlelight vigil in Webber's honor was scheduled at his former high school football field in Stanwood. Meanwhile, Duane Dreasky never knew he was the lone survivor. News of his comrades' deaths was kept from him. "He had his ups and down," mother Cheryl said. "We tried to keep his spirits up." Dreasky, the soldier who reportedly once turned off the hot water while some comrades were showering, gained media attention in the hospital where he famously tried to raise a bandaged arm to salute the president. He knew wife Mandy - who also was in the military and had finished a tour in Iraq - was nearby. But after eight months, on July 10, Dreasky also lost his battle to live. "He was born to be a soldier, and he lived his life's dream," Cheryl Dreasky said. Her daddy's eyes Wisps of reddish baby hair sweep over little MacKenzie's head as she squirts out an impish giggle in the wallet-sized picture Katie Youmans carries. "That was Josh's favorite picture," Youmans said. "He kept asking to see it." MacKenzie recently celebrated her first birthday. She has her father's hair color, her mother's nose. Her giggle is almost as "crazy" as the one her father was known for. But it's in MacKenzie's eyes - the same piercing blue eyes everyone noticed about Josh - that Katie sees her husband every day. "Her eyes just look into your soul, just like his did," she said. At a restaurant booth on a recent fall day, Katie Youmans' gold diamond wedding ring sparkled as she sifted through a pile of "MacKenzie photos." There is MacKenzie playing, laughing and just being a toddler trying to take her first steps. It's a glimpse of a big world of experiences she has already lived through without her dad. 'Sleep tight' It's hard for Youmans to go back to Feb. 2, 2005, the day she found out she was pregnant. The last year and a half seems like a blur. When she went into labor, her husband found out via an instant online message. In the delivery room, her best friend, Krista Frame, was tagged as the birthing coach. "I was on the phone with (Josh), telling him everything that was going on," Frame said. "He kept asking how Katie was and how MacKenzie was. I kept telling him they were OK." The IED blew up nearly six weeks later. Youmans doesn't want to remember her husband as a burn victim, but as the man he spent most of his life being. "He was my best friend, and I was his. We were lucky to have found each other," she said. "We were really lucky." The reminders are everywhere. On Sept. 16, the day the couple would have celebrated their sixth wedding anniversary, MacKenzie was baptized. A first Christmas without him is near. Veterans Day was Saturday. This month is the one-year anniversary of the blast. Katie Youmans' younger brother, Will Draheim, 28, an Army specialist, recently was also deployed to Iraq. It helps, she said, to be connected to the other families. Many of the military men she's met have become "like protective brothers." Families like that of Capt. Anthony Dennis, who was Josh's commander, have become close friends. Then there's her biggest refuge. She's the little princess known to clap and laugh when other people clap, because she "thinks they're all clapping for her." Or who has recently learned to "fake cry" and "fake fall" in a wily attempt to snag attention. "She has just brought so much joy into our lives. I don't know how we'd all get through this without her," Youmans said. Youmans spends these days with her daughter and working part time in youth ministry at a church in Chesaning. She buried her husband March 11, but only recently picked a headstone. "It's hard because it's so final," she said quietly. She used to always tell him "sleep tight," and he'd respond with "don't let the bedbugs bite." The black marble headstone with an American flag etched into it will read, "Sleep tight: Papa, husband, hero." Published: Sunday, November 12, 2006, 8:03 AM Updated: Monday, February 04, 2008, 10:20 AMMatt Bach | Flint Journal Nov. 21, 2005, was a cool fall day at the base near al-Habbaniyah, Iraq, and the five men from Michigan had spent the morning meeting with Iraqi police forces. Afterward, they set out to patrol the town of fewer than 20,000 people just a couple of miles away. Their assignment: Report back on the "atmosphere." They spent much of the day at a large indoor marketplace packed with trinket vendors. Then the five men, with their body armor and guns, crammed into the last of four enclosed, armored Humvees and headed back to base in midafternoon. Along a dusty road dotted with palm trees and irrigation ditches, the caravan trailed through the lush green farming area of the Euphrates Valley. The men's ages spanned 14 years. They hailed from all over the state. They came from different worlds and had different dreams. Less than a mile from safety, they rolled straight toward the most lethal weapon in the Iraqi insurgents' arsenal. They might as well have driven into hell. The bond They were joined by a mission in Iraq:
Army National Guard Capt. Anthony Dennis was the group's commander. "That day, it's like Dec. 7, 1941," said Dennis, evoking Pearl Harbor. "It will live in me, and more than likely in the rest of the guys deployed with us, forever." Signing up Youmans was famous for his trademark, high-pitched "crazy laugh" but quiet around people he didn't know. His lifelong dream? To be a police officer. In 2003, he told wife Katie that he wanted to join the Army National Guard out of respect for the job. "He said, 'If you don't want me to, I won't,'" Katie Youmans said. "But I supported him because we always supported each other. "This was something he really wanted to do." On his 25th birthday, days before he was sent for training for Iraq, he got big news: Katie was pregnant. John "J.W." Dearing's innocent, freckle-faced look hid his mischievous side. The 2003 graduate of Oscoda High School loved baseball, hunting with his dad and being a free spirit. Born in a military family, he joined the Reserves when he was still in high school. Then, home after a tour of duty in Egypt, he volunteered to go to Iraq. One day while on a nine-day leave from training, he donned his olive class-A uniform, and he and sweetheart Amanda, neither one old enough to gamble, got married in her parents' backyard. Instead of a honeymoon, Dearing left for Iraq a week later. Everyone knew Duane Dreasky was born to be a soldier, despite his teddy-bear heart and even before he started wearing fatigues to school. He was always trying a new adventure: scuba, skydiving, martial arts. But knee problems kept the burly former Walled Lake Western football player and wrestler from joining the military. It took desperate letters to local elected officials to get him into the Michigan Army National Guard in 2003, a dream come true. After a year in Cuba, he volunteered to go to Iraq. "He literally volunteered and begged and pleaded until they said yes," mother Cheryl said. "He wanted to go on a mission." And then, Duane, 30, promised he would take Mandeline, "Mandy," his best friend and wife of nearly six years, on a trip across the country. Spencer Akers figured if he went to war, fewer married men would have to. The 1988 Pine River High School graduate, a jokester but passionate about the military, was a 1991 Gulf War vet almost 35 years old when he volunteered to go to Iraq. "He's been a soldier since he was 5 years old," father Don said. Before leaving for Iraq, Spencer worked part time selling big-screen TVs at the Best Buy store in Traverse City, where he planned to buy his first house. Matthew Webber was "the pretty boy," president of the student council, a National Honor Society member, a three-sport athlete and member of a college fraternity. He was earning a business and marketing degree at Western Michigan University, where everyone who knew him liked him. In 1999, he joined the National Guard to earn money for college, never expecting to go into active combat. But six years later, at age 22, he did.
The five men - some of them "weekend warriors" together in the Guard - were all sent to Iraq in June 2005 with the 140-member Saginaw-based Company B of the 125th Infantry Regiment. Back home, families would sit near computers into the night and early morning, never wanting to miss a moment their soldiers were online. "He would talk just like a regular person," Dreasky's mother, Cheryl, remembers. "He'd say, 'I just got in from work, another day down.'" Akers would write to his father, Don: "I don't care what the media says. The job is being done here. It just won't be done overnight." Dearing asked for sweets to hand out to Iraqi kids and sent his new bride pictures of himself - watching for enemies on a guard tower, on a walkie-talkie, with comrades. "I love you," he wrote in a caption. On Nov. 4, a land mine detonated near a Humvee. The resulting death of Army Spc. Timothy Brown, 23, of Cedar Springs was the first in their company. "They were in a very, very dangerous area, and they were doing a lot of very challenging work. It was very clear they were taking good care of one another," said Maj. Gen. Thomas Cutler, head of the Michigan National Guard, who visited the men in Iraq and saw pictures of all of the enemies they helped seize. "They were proud of that work because they were making the streets safer."
Camp Habbaniyah is tucked between Fallujah and Ramadi in central Iraq, about 45 miles west of Baghdad in one of the most treacherous parts of the country. A big part of the 125th's mission was to rebuild Iraqi police forces and capture and kill insurgents and terrorists. "These guys were helping make the country a better place," said Dennis, their commander. Among the perils they faced were improvised explosive devices, or roadside bombs, the insurgents' weapon of choice. Easy to make, hard to spot and wickedly effective, they are a main cause of soldier deaths and injuries in the Iraq war. On Nov. 21, with the soldiers on the road back to their base after patrol, an unseen enemy triggerman watched the convoy and set off his IED as the fourth Humvee passed. The explosion blazed through the vehicle and its five men. Dearing died instantly. Furious flames ravaged his four comrades with horrific burns, some bone deep. "I'm still having trouble talking about it," said Dennis, who was in the second Humvee. "It was devastating. They were all part of my family." What happened next is a blur. Other Humvees were radioed in. Fellow soldiers quickly evacuated the men's scorched bodies into vehicles in the midst of rabid flames. Mostly conscious, the men's faces showed courage as they were loaded into other Humvees, the doors shutting behind them. "It was a very significant, traumatic experience for every single one of us ... that's been burned into our memories," Dennis said. "When they say 'band of brothers,' there's no comparison to it. There will always be that bond. "I could not have asked for a better group of guys." Several men stayed back to search the area. (About a month later, a sister company detained a suspect, military officials said, but any outcome is unknown.) It took just 30 minutes to get the wounded men to a medical base in Habbaniyah. There, they received prompt medical care, which most likely included immediate oxygen and shock treatment. Charred areas of their skin were wrapped with dry, sterile gauze. "The trauma platoon said that getting them there so quickly is what extended their lives," Dennis said. "It was already disastrous, but they said if they had stayed out there any longer, it would have been even more disastrous." The men were treated and stabilized at the base before being airlifted to Landstuhl, Germany. Within days, the men - covered in bandages, all in critical condition - were taken back to the United States together by a specially equipped Air Force C-17 transport plane that has been described as "an intensive care unit in the sky." Doctors and nurses aboard its flights treat badly burned soldiers throughout the nearly 12-hour flight across the Atlantic Ocean. An ambulance meets the plane at San Antonio International Airport, about 15 minutes away from Brooke Army Medical Center's burn unit in Fort Sam Houston, Texas. On Thanksgiving night, the four men arrived at this state-of-the-art military burn unit, where many burn victims from Afghanistan and Iraq start down a long road to recovery, even in the best-case scenario. A new life Back in Flushing Township, Katie Youmans was adjusting to life as a new mom. Time off from youth ministry at a Chesaning church was spent changing diapers, feeding and trying to set a sleep schedule for her and Josh's new daughter, MacKenzie. It was about 10 a.m. in Iraq nearly two months earlier that she had sent Josh an important instant message: "My water just broke." Hours later, the couple became parents to a healthy baby girl with thin, butter-blond strands of hair and ocean-blue eyes. In the delivery room at Hurley Medical Center, Katie Youmans' best friend, Krista Frame - who had attended Lamaze classes with Katie - was at her side instead of her husband. But when Josh Youmans called the hospital room from halfway around the globe, he stayed on the phone until he could hear his newborn's cries. From his post more than 6,000 miles away and in a time zone 12 hours ahead, Josh Youmans watched on a Web video camera as MacKenzie slept in her bassinet. He proudly showed off pictures from the more than 200 e-mailed to him. Katie Youmans had spent less than eight weeks bonding with her baby girl, who still hadn't met her dad, when Army officers dressed in green, basic-duty uniforms came to this tiny township looking for her. They had bad news. Timeline
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