A split-second decision left a prominent Afghan doctor dead and a platoon sergeant in hot water. Then came the hurt.
Sgt. 1st Class Walter Taylor’s 13-year Army career boiled down to mere seconds in Afghanistan’s volatile Wardak province.
A roadside bomb had thrown his platoon’s 22-ton Buffalo vehicle 10 feet into the air, tossing it off the road like a toy. Five of his soldiers were wounded. Small-arms fire peppered the soldiers.
A black car sped toward the convoy, spinning to a halt as Taylor’s gunners opened fire. Minutes went by, and no one inside the black car moved.
But as Taylor and his soldiers walked toward the car, tracing a command wire that appeared to lead toward the car, a figure, dressed in black, emerged.
Fearing the person was going for a detonator or a rocket-propelled grenade launcher in the trunk, Taylor fired his weapon. The figure dropped to the ground.
But the person Taylor shot wasn’t an insurgent. She was Dr. Aqilah Hikmat, a noted female doctor — and one of the few in the country. Her death was quickly denounced by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, whose office said she and her son were “martyred.”
Three weeks later, Taylor learned he was under investigation, and homicide charges were pending.
And Taylor said he believes the Afghans executed their own punishment for the attack. Twelve days after Hikmat’s death, Taylor and his platoon were out on patrol when an RPG smashed into Taylor’s truck, striking him in the face in an attack Taylor suspects was revenge for the death of the well-connected Hikmat.
Taylor, platoon sergeant for 1st Platoon, 541st Engineer Company, 54th Engineer Battalion, now waits for the findings from his Article 32 hearing that will determine whether he will be sent to court-martial. And he remains in Bamberg, Germany, where his unit is based. But he needs more surgeries on his blown-up face, according to his lawyer, work that can be done only in a military hospital in the U.S.
Taylor said he learned about the criminal investigation while he was still in the hospital.
“I was shocked. I was hurt. In my thought process, I was like, I could have died doing my job, trying to take care of everybody,” he told Army Times. “I’ve always done right by everybody, and to wake up in the [intensive-care unit], I can’t see, with a tube down my mouth, knowing my face is literally gone, and then hear this is going on, I was lost.”
Over three days in late June, Article 32 investigating officer Lt. Col. Alva Hart, of the 16th Sustainment Brigade, heard testimony from soldiers and investigators about the events of July 21, 2011. As of July 13, he had not rendered his findings and recommendations, and had asked for and received an extension.
Taylor’s civilian defense attorney, James Culp, who has blasted the charges against his client as being politically driven retaliation, anticipates Hart’s recommendations will be known in early August.
“I submit to you that this is a brave new world [where] we are now going to Monday-morning-quarterback [noncommissioned officers] in a kinetic combat environment,” Culp said in his closing argument during the Article 32. “Sgt. Taylor had a second to make a decision, just a couple of seconds. If he hadn’t shot and the person had blown up, then he got it wrong. There was no right answer for Sgt. Taylor. There is not a right answer for this case.”
Capt. Courtney Cohen, the prosecuting attorney, argued in her closing statement at the Article 32 that Taylor violated the rules of engagement.
“This event unfolded over the course of 20 to 30 minutes,” she said. “Sgt. 1st Class Taylor did not even give Dr. Hikmat a chance.”
The International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan takes “allegations of civilian casualties seriously,” spokeswoman Lt. Col. Sarah Goodson wrote in an email to Army Times.
Goodson also noted that, as of July 7, the number of ISAF-caused civilian casualties is 45 percent lower than the same period last year.
“We recognize that protecting the safety of the Afghan people is the cornerstone of our mission, and we are saddened each and every time we learn that innocent civilians have been harmed, regardless of who is responsible,” she said.
When asked about the case against Taylor, Col. Rumi Nielson-Green, spokeswoman for U.S. Army Europe, said it is “important to note the distinction between an investigation and prosecution.”
“This investigation is being conducted to ensure that the rules of engagement and the law of land warfare were followed and the Uniform Code of Military Justice was not violated,” Nielson-Green wrote in an email to Army Times. “The U.S. Army has and will always continue to investigate suspected incidences of wrongdoing. … No decision of guilt or innocence has been made in this case.”
Nielson-Green added that the decision to keep Taylor in his unit and not a warrior transition unit was made by his command “to better facilitate his legal requirements during this investigation with full consideration of his medical condition.”
She would not release information about Taylor’s medical needs, citing privacy restrictions, but wrote “I can confirm that there is robust medical care available here.”
A tireless trainer
Taylor didn’t have aspirations to join the Army and had scholarship offers to go to college.
But in July 1999, the wiry young man from the Tampa, Fla., area joined the Army with his friend from junior high.
“I personally didn’t want anything to do with the Army, but he was going to the Marines and I didn’t think that would be the best choice, so me being the friend I am, I said let’s just go to the Army together, it seems like it would be better long-term,” Taylor said.
He decided to stay in the Army during his first deployment.
“My mother always would call to try to find out how her son was doing, she’d worry all the time, and there were people who would always reassure her that her son would come home,” Taylor said. “Because of that, I felt the same obligation to others.”
In 13 years, Taylor has served four combat tours — three to Iraq and one to Afghanistan — and a deployment to Kosovo.
He earned the rank of sergeant first class in seven years — the average time is 13 years — and served as a drill sergeant at Fort Jackson, S.C. He graduated at the top of his Advanced Noncommissioned Officer Course, now known as the Senior Leader Course.
A perfectionist and hard worker, Taylor is small, weighing just 113 pounds. But he is tough, his soldiers said.
Spc. Wayne Wedgeworth Jr., one of the five soldiers wounded in the blast that hit the Buffalo, will admit he did not like Taylor at first.
“But I have come to respect the hell out of the man because of what he has done,” he said.
As platoon sergeant, Taylor drove his soldiers hard, said Wedgeworth, who is no longer in the Army.
“He’s a little bitty dude, but he didn’t give a damn how big you are or how bad you were,” Wedgeworth said with a laugh.
Taylor’s soldiers were always the first to show up to work, and he would drive them to do extra physical training and work them hard during the day.
“Now that I look back, he was basically keeping us out of trouble,” Wedgeworth said.
Taylor never slept, it would seem, living off Mountain Dew instead, Wedgeworth said. And he would always take time to teach and mentor his young soldiers, even studying with them as they prepared for promotion boards.
“We’d be out all freaking day, and he’d be in our living quarters teaching and talking to us,” Wedgeworth said. “He would mentor [the younger guys]. He would try to set them up for when they got out of the Army. He was constantly telling them you need to go to school.”
Taylor credits his success in the Army to the leaders he’s had and his mentors.
“They were all overachievers,” he said. “If you want to be the best, you’ve got to give the hours, you’ve got to train. At the end of the day, I don’t measure what I do, not what I achieve or what I want, but it’s what my soldiers do.”
The fog of war
In November 2010, Taylor and his soldiers deployed to Afghanistan. They served in Logar province before being moved to Wardak. By June 2011, “everyone in my platoon by that point had been blown up at least once,” Taylor said.
Two soldiers — Staff Sgt. Joshua Gire and Pfc. Michael Mahr — were killed March 22, and at least one other soldier had been medically evacuated out of Afghanistan.
On July 21, 2011, Taylor and his soldiers were up early for a route clearance mission that left the base, Combat Outpost Carwile, at 3 or 4 a.m. The soldiers walked about 10 miles, sweeping the area on foot for hidden improvised explosive devices.
“When we walk, we walk,” Taylor said. “There are no breaks. It’s consistent, and you walk over loose sand, up and down hills, down in what I would call deep wadis and up, so you have a lot of terrain to negotiate.”
They returned to the base around noon, and within 45 minutes were tasked to leave for Forward Operating Base Airborne, about 70 miles away, for maintenance.
An hour after leaving the base, the IED exploded, tossing the Buffalo into the air. Taylor said he dismounted from his truck, which was toward the rear of the convoy and closest to the downed Buffalo, to help sweep for secondary IEDs.
“I wasn’t going to take a chance to let someone hit us with a secondary IED or an RPG,” he said. “I knew that since I was closest, that meant whatever detonated was close to me. It also meant that my vehicle and the vehicles behind me were probably still in the kill zone.”
Taylor quickly spotted a command wire and then noticed two white cars.
“That’s when they started shooting at us,” he said.
The platoon’s dismounts and gunners opened fire on the white cars while Taylor fired his M203 grenade launcher to mark and direct the gunners’ fire.
“As the white cars were speeding off, I noticed the black car,” Taylor said. “It was like it was part of the initial movement with the white cars.”
As the firefight continued, the black car, a Suzuki sedan, “did something I had never seen before,” Taylor said. “It started trying to overtake the white cars while the firing was going on.”
To him, Taylor said, it appeared as if the black car was trying to shield the white cars from the soldiers’ fire.
“From what I saw, we were getting shot at and muzzle flashes were coming from all the cars,” Taylor said.
The white cars escaped, speeding off into the rocky terrain. The enemy small-arms fire stopped.
The black car came to a halt, bullet holes in its doors. No one moved; no one got out. The soldiers didn’t think anyone in the car was alive.
When the shooting stopped, Taylor said, he went to the Buffalo to help get the wounded soldiers out. While the medic treated them, Taylor took with him a team of soldiers to follow the command wire he had found earlier.
The wire seemed to lead toward the black car, Taylor said.
“At this point, we started moving toward the car very cautiously,” he said. “All of a sudden, someone darted out of the car and started moving toward the trunk. At that point, I perceived that I and the soldiers around me were going to die.”
Taylor said he didn’t see the person raise his or her hands, nor did he hear the person say anything.
That’s when “me and my soldiers took aim and shot the person,” Taylor said.
Accounts from the soldiers vary, but at this point, the black car was anywhere from 25 to 150 meters away.
Immediately after the shooting, Taylor said he left two soldiers to guard the car and returned to the Buffalo because the medevac helicopters had arrived for his soldiers. After the helicopters left with the wounded, Taylor returned to the car.
That’s when he learned the front-seat passenger, who would turn out to be Hikmat’s husband, was still alive. Hikmat’s son, who was in the driver’s seat, and her niece, who was in the back seat, were dead, killed in the initial barrage on the car.
Hikmat’s husband told the soldiers they were returning to Kabul from a wedding party, according to the 15-6 investigation into the events of that day.
Taylor said he left his medic and a sergeant at the car while he and the other soldiers continued to follow the command wire.
“I did not stop to pay attention because I still had a threat to worry about,” Taylor said. “I didn’t know if someone was still in the woods or waiting for us to get closer.”
Scathing investigation
During the Article 32, Sgt. Nicholas Wilson, who was with Taylor that day, testified that he believes he also shot at the woman and he had “no reason to believe there were civilians” in the black car.
Sgt. Richard McKelvey, another soldier on the ground that day, testified he saw Taylor smiling and heard him say something to the effect of “That’s what you get” as the soldiers approached the black car and realized Hikmat’s husband was still alive.
Culp, Taylor’s attorney, in an intense cross-examination of McKelvey on the stand, worked to show the soldier held a grudge against Taylor for deeming him not ready to go to the E-6 board and other issues.
“You want to get him in trouble, isn’t that right?” Culp said.
“That is not true, sir,” McKelvey said.
“Would it surprise you to learn that you’re the only person that has indicated or testified or made a statement that Sgt. Taylor was smiling about anything that day?” Culp said.
“That does not surprise me, sir. I’m always the outsider in 1st Platoon, sir,” McKelvey said.
In a scathing 15-6 investigation conducted by the 18th Engineer Brigade into the events of July 21, the platoon was cited for failures in communication, and command and control, and for substandard positive identification.
The investigating officer, Lt. Col. Christopher Drew, wrote in his report, dated last Aug. 23, that the platoon was not properly organized, resulting in a “confusing or nonexistent” command structure. The platoon was “not prepared for the complex attack,” and the leadership “planned poorly and conducted minimal, inadequate rehearsals,” according to the report.
He also found the platoon’s radio network was not controlled, and communication was “undisciplined, unclear and inconsistent.”
Drew recommended the platoon leader, 2nd Lt. Jeremiah Paterson, be relieved for cause for a “complete absence of command and control” and because his “negligence resulted in his soldiers erroneously identifying the black vehicle as hostile,” according to the report.
During his testimony at the Article 32, Paterson confirmed that he was relieved of his duties as platoon leader and that he was “informed I was not getting promoted anymore.”
When asked by the defense, Paterson said he believes investigators and his commanders formed conclusions about what happened July 21, 2011, before gathering all the evidence.
Drew also recommended Taylor be relieved of his duties and flagged pending the outcome of a criminal investigation. Taylor was not relieved before he was wounded.
The 15-6 report also states that Taylor “knew that the black vehicle was not hostile,” which Culp disputes.
“That’s erroneous,” Culp said. “In my mind, the end result [of the 15-6] was already predetermined beforehand.”
Brush with death
On Aug. 2, while out on patrol, one of the convoy’s Husky vehicles broke down in an area in which the soldiers said they never dismounted their vehicles because of the heavy enemy activity.
After Taylor coordinated the recovery of the Husky, an RPG slammed into his truck, bursting into the right front window and into his face.
Taylor and his driver, Sgt. Raymond Olivares, were wounded.
“If it hadn’t been for my soldiers doing what they did that day, I probably would have bled out,” Taylor said. “I had lost so much blood they didn’t think I was going to make it overnight, and they kept pumping blood in me.”
Olivares said when he came to, he and Taylor were covered in blood.
“Sgt. Taylor’s nose and his face were kind of missing,” Olivares said. “He was covered in blood. He couldn’t breathe. I thought he was dead.”
Olivares said he tried to wrap Taylor’s face to stop the bleeding, but his hands were numb from shrapnel wounds and burns. He then kicked the door open and tried to pull Taylor out, but “then my eyes went black and I couldn’t pick him up.”
Olivares, who is awaiting a medical evaluation, and is at San Antonio Military Medical Center, said he continues to receive therapy for his damaged hands and back, and doctors are still assessing the blast’s damage to his eyes.
Despite his own serious wounds, Taylor continues to worry about his soldiers, Olivares said.
“He always puts the soldiers before himself,” Olivares said. “He doesn’t sleep and doesn’t eat until everyone has something to eat. He’s always taking care of soldiers.”
Olivares said he also is upset with his platoon leader, who reportedly left the scene after he and Taylor were wounded, leaving the platoon without leadership.
The lieutenant, Paterson, also fell apart on July 21, 2011, Olivares said.
The officer was so unnerved that Olivares said he had to make the medevac request and call for a quick-reaction force while sending up reports to the platoon’s higher headquarters.
“He didn’t take control,” Olivares said. “He didn’t do anything.”
Olivares said he hopes Taylor, who has already had almost a dozen surgeries, is allowed to be moved back to the U.S. to get the medical care he needs.
“If they let him come back last year, I’m sure he would be better by now,” Olivares said.
Culp said Taylor is being held in Germany, where doctors have done all they can for Taylor, because of the legal proceedings.
“There is no reason that Sgt. Taylor, there is no valid reason, for the delay in his medical care,” Culp said, adding that if Taylor is sent to court-martial, he plans to seek a change of venue so Taylor can get the medical care he needs. “It is unconscionable.”
In a memo, Maj. (Dr.) Jared Theler, a surgeon at the San Antonio Military Medical Center, estimated Taylor will need multiple reconstructive surgeries over an 18-month period.
The surgeries will reduce scarring and reconstruct Taylor’s facial features, Theler wrote. In addition, Taylor has “multiple orthopedic injuries” requiring long-term care that he also will receive in San Antonio, the doctor wrote.
Staying positive
Taylor said he is trying to stay positive.
“Whenever I get really, really down, I look at [my two kids] and tell myself they need a dad,” he said. “I know they need me to be there for them. Between them and my soldiers, helping other soldiers deal with their issues, being a leader, helping other soldiers, between all of that, it keeps me positive, keeps my mind balanced.”
Taylor said he wants to continue serving in the Army.
“At the end of the day, you’ve got to do what’s right,” he said. “People go to war, they don’t go there to harm anyone, they just go to do their jobs. One of our priorities is making sure the mission is taken care of and to bring home our soldiers.
Wedgeworth, who suffers from traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder, high blood pressure and bulging discs in his neck from the Buffalo blast, said his platoon was put through the “meat grinder” in Afghanistan.
After the Buffalo was blown up, “I thought I was dead, to tell you the truth,” he said. “I thought I was done. I’d just never been in so much pain like that.”
A corrections officer for 15 years before joining the Army, Wedgeworth said he was furious when he learned about the charges against Taylor.
“He basically did what I would have done,” Wedgeworth said. “I feel like anybody put in that situation would have done the same thing. The man is a hero and he should be awarded, not disgraced.”
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