Stars and Stripes 10.2.15

Volume 7, No. 41 ŠSS 2015

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2015

The families of two seasoned pilots who died in a 2000 Osprey crash are still fighting to set the record straight about its cause.

The Pentagon gets yet another chance to fix it this month.

A MATTER OF HONOR

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COVER STORY

FIGHTING FOR THEIR HONOR Families of pilots killed in 2000 Osprey crash on a quest to clear Marines’ names

TARA C OPP/Stars and Stripes

A few years after the Osprey crash that killed her husband, Connie Gruber began a quest to clear her husband’s name. The Osprey above her TV was a gift after the crash.

BY TARA COPP Stars and Stripes JACKSONVILLE, N.C. The chopping of the tilt-rotor engine was soft at first, but Connie Gruber knows the sound by heart.

“That’s the Osprey,” she said from her living room sofa, looking up toward the room’s arched windows. “We’re in its flight pattern; sometimes I can see it through that window.”

Fifteen years ago, on April 8, 2000, Connie’s husband, Marine Corps Maj. Brooks Gruber, and Lt. Col. John Brow were testing an Osprey that crashed in Marana, Ariz., killing them and 17 other Marines on board.

Years later, investigations into the crash would show that the men boarded the aircraft that night lacking the knowledge, training or warning systems that could have saved their lives.

Still, when the Marines issued a statement in July 2000 on their findings of the crash, they allowed Brow and Gruber to take the blame.

“Human factors” were said to be the primary cause of the accident.

After the crash, or “mishap” as it is called in official correspondence, and a second fatal crash a few months later, the Osprey was kicked back into development to identify the speeds, descents and altitudes of safe flight. Training was overhauled, and an electronic

Lt. Col. John Brow

Maj. Brooks Gruber

ONLINE A list of the 19 who died in the Osprey crash on April 8, 2000. stripes.com/go/osprey

warning system was installed that would alert crews if the airframe was nearing speeds and descent rates that could put them in jeopardy.

On April 8, 2000, Brow and Gruber didn’t have any of that.

In the 15 years since, the families of both pilots have relentlessly pushed to clear their names. They have enlisted the help of Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., who has become so dedicated to their cause he says he’ll die before he lets the issue go. Through the years of pressing the Department of Defense to clear Brow and Gruber, many of the officials who were involved with the program have said the men were not to blame. This week, they made their case again, this time with Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work.

They want a letter spelling out that the cause of the crash was not pilot error, to set the record straight. They want to make a point of honor, said

Brow’s widow, Trish: The pilots “discovered an aerodynamic phenomena that was unique to the aircraft — and then they were blamed for it.”

An exciting start Almost 25 years ago, in a friend’s living room not too far from her current house, Connie was a Camp Lejeune schoolteacher getting ready for a blind date.

“And he walked in, said, ‘Hello,’ and smiles … and I thought, ‘Wow,’ ” she said.

“It was just that feeling like you’ve always known him.”

The pair married under the Marines’ crossed swords in December 1992.

Gruber had his vision set on the Corps’ highly competitive new aviation program to fly the V-22, and he and his wife worked through a long application process.

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COVER STORY

FROM PAGE 2

When he was selected, they moved to Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland.

Gruber took his first flight in the Osprey with Brow.

When they landed, the guys got sprayed with a firehose to celebrate.

“He’d just come home from flying it.” Connie recalled.

“We’re sitting down at the dinner table and he’s just talking to me with the energy of like a little boy, a little kid, and he said, ‘It smelled like a new car, and it felt like a rocket.’ ” Brow’s wife, Trish, and their two boys, Mike and Matt, were already settled in the area; Brow was a career C-130 pilot who’d take his 7- and 8-yearold sons onto the base to its fishing hole and into the cockpits of the C-130 and the Osprey. As wives of this unique testing crew, Trish and Connie

knew each other casually then. But Connie was quick to return to North Carolina when she and her husband found out at Christmas 1998 they were expecting a baby. Gruber was to be permanently stationed at Marine Corps Air Station New River in Jacksonville after training finished anyway, and Connie’s mother lived there, so they quickly had a home built close to the base and settled in.

Connie last saw her husband on Valentine’s Day in 2000.

Their daughter Brooke was 6-months-old. Gruber was getting ready to deploy, and he was excited. The career CH-53 pilot was packing for several months of critical flight tests in Arizona with the Osprey. Later that fall the Pentagon would decide whether the program was ready for full-rate production, and the

Navy and Marine Corps were eager to keep it on track.

Boundaries unknown The V-22 Osprey was envisioned as a hybrid: halfplane, half-helicopter and designed to give the military the forward speed of fixedwing flying and the flexibility of rotary takeoff, hover and landing. By the time Brow and Gruber prepared to board the Osprey for operational tests, the program was under tremendous pressure.

“This was a program that Dick Cheney wanted to kill when he was secretary of defense because of the costs and technology problems,” said Larry Korb, who served as assistant secretary of defense (manpower, reserve affairs, installations, and logistics) under President Ronald Reagan.

Cheney was about to return to a position of influence over the program, as vice president under George W. Bush.

To protect the Osprey, the services needed it moved into full-rate production.

“The longer this thing stays around [in testing] before moving into [full-rate] production, the greater chance it will be canceled,” Korb said.

“That’s why they did it.”

The program was $3 billion over budget and eight years behind schedule, according to Richard Whittle, a former Pentagon correspondent who tracked the program and reported its story in “The Dream Machine: The Untold History of the Notorious V-22 Osprey.”

To rush the Osprey into fullrate production, the Navy cut critical developmental testing that the Osprey’s contractors

should have performed, according to a General Accountability Office investigation after the crash. As a result, the boundaries of safe flight on the Osprey were unknown when the men tested it that night.

Neither the training manuals nor the training program warned them that the rate of descent and speed could induce a dangerous turbulence known as “vortex ring state,” which could be fatal.

April 2000 was to be the last month of critical testing.

Gruber and Brow had about 100 flight hours each in the Osprey, and thousands of flight hours in their former aircraft. They were known, the subsequent investigation found, as “some of the Corps’ most professional and seasoned pilots.”

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COVER STORY FROM PAGE 3

No warning The night of April 8, 2000, Brow and Gruber’s Osprey served as the wingman of a two-ship formation, and they were tailed by two Osprey crews assessing their performance. The Ospreys were interacting with more than two dozen fighter jets and helicopters over Arizona as part of the Weapons Tactics Instructor course 2.0, which pushes airframes and crews and provides the only realistic environment to test the Osprey’s performance other than sending it to war. As they approached their target that night, the lead Osprey, Nighthawk 71, and Brow and Gruber’s aircraft were 2,000 feet above their assigned altitude. One minute from their target, the lead aircraft’s pilots realized the Ospreys were too high and began to descend, according to the crash investigation report.

Nighthawk 72 followed their lead.

To drop faster, the crews cut speed. At that point in the flight, Nighthawk 72 was in its helicopter configuration and, according to the flight recorder, it was dropping altitude at more than 2,000 feet per minute. In the final minute of the flight, to slow the fall, Brow increased power to the Osprey’s two engines. According to the accident report, the added power increased the amount of disturbed air under the Osprey that was pushed up through the rotor blades. The aircraft then entered vortex ring state. It was a known risk for helicopter pilots, but for the Osprey in 2000, there were no identified triggers, no training on avoidance and no in-flight system warning.

“As the [Osprey] encountered Vortex Ring State … flight control inputs/responses were normal,” the initial crash investigation found, up to the point when Brow maneuvered right to land. The Osprey began an uncontrolled roll, slamming inverted and nosefirst into the ground, exploding and killing all 19 Marines on board.

Nighthawk 71 made a hard landing but all crewmembers survived.

Top left: The future Connie Gruber was a teacher at Camp Lejeune, N.C., when she was set up on a blind date with a CH-53 pilot, Lt. Brooks Gruber. They married two years later in 1992.

Courtesy of Connie Gruber

Top right: Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., didn’t know much about the Osprey program when he sat behind Connie Gruber at her husband’s funeral in April 2000. Fifteen years later, clearing Maj. Brooks Gruber’s name is a cause Jones has not let go of.

TARA C OPP/Stars and Stripes

‘Human factors’ The operating manual that Brow and Gruber had before the crash was called the NATOPS, for Naval Air Training and Operating Procedures Standardization. It warned them to avoid descent rates of 800 feet per minute or greater at air speeds less than 40 knots. It says nothing more.

There is no discussion in the manual that failure to follow these speeds could lead to vortex ring state.

According to an investigation in 2000, the 800 feetper-minute/40 knots speed limit was established by the contractor at altitudes above 10,000 feet “for safety purposes” — nothing like the operations being tested that night. Naval Air Systems Command, NAVAIR, “chose not to continue the testing or explore the V-22 [vortex ring state] characteristics” and greenlighted the airframe to move to Brow and Gruber’s

team after “receiving assurance” from their testing command “that the 800/40 limit would be acceptable.”

A GAO investigation in 2001 would find that “developmental testing was deleted, deferred or simulated in order to meet cost or schedule goals.”

The command that reassured NAVAIR was led by Lt. Gen. Fred McCorkle, and he led the press briefing July 27, 2000, that launched the families’ current nightmare. He wouldn’t allow TV cameras to show his face as he read the findings from the 8,000-page crash report out of respect “for the families that have buried their loved ones.” Then he tore those families apart.

“Apparently, neither pilot recognized the danger presented by their high rate of descent and low forward airspeed, which is the same in any helicopter that you fly,” McCorkle said at the briefing.

“Although the report stops short of specifying pilot error

Left: Trish Brow leaned on a network of neighbors, Scoutmasters and soccer dads to help raise her sons Mike, left, and Matt. All three of them said they will not give up trying to clear Lt. Col. John Brow’s name.

TARA C OPP/Stars and Stripes

as a cause, it notes that the pilot of the ill-fated aircraft significantly exceeded the rate of descent established by regulations for safe flight.”

Then McCorkle read from the press release: “Unfortunately, the pilot’s drive to accomplish that mission appears to have been the fatal flaw.”

The print version of the release is slightly different, instead saying “fatal factor.”

“When most of us first saw [the press release] we thought it was euphemism for pilot error,” said Whittle, who covered the Pentagon for the Dallas Morning News.

McCorkle said at the briefing that they chose “human factors” instead of “pilot

error” to reflect actions from both crews.

“You’ll see that there were human-factor errors that were committed by the two crewmembers, the pilot and the co-pilot, of the lead airplane, to put the mishap aircraft into the position that he was in,” he said. “And both the pilots in the mishap aircraft were in there with human factors too.”

Thirteen years later, Philip Coyle, then-head of the Pentagon’s operational test and evaluation program, questioned how McCorkle and the Marine Corps could tarnish the reputations of Brow and Gruber. “These pilots died trying to accomplish a mission that had been laid out for them in advance,” he said in a 2013 letter to help Jones clear their names.

“The Marine Corps was trying to demonstrate that the V-22 Osprey could descend rapidly into a landing zone under hostile circumstances that might be encountered in battle at night. Coming in slow and low would not be consistent with hostile battlefield conditions.

“The sentence implies that the pilots knowingly did something wrong when they didn’t,” Coyle wrote. “The boundary conditions for safe flight were not known on April 8, 2000, not to the pilots of the aircraft that day nor to anyone else.”

In January 2001, CBS news program “60 Minutes” tied McCorkle to a scandal at New River where the Osprey squadron commander was removed for falsifying maintenance records to improve its readiness rating.

In an email obtained by CBS, McCorkle’s subordinate, then-Brig. Gen. James Amos, warned him six months after the crash that the readiness rates of the Osprey were plummeting.

“Had hoped to be able to use some recent numbers next month when you meet [with then-Navy acquisition head Lee] Buchanan” for his full rate decision in December, Amos wrote. “But there’s nothing they can do about the current numbers at 204,” referencing VMMT-204, the Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron at New River.

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COVER STORY FROM PAGE 4

“Remember that their Maint Dept is on the “improved NALCOMIS,” which you can’t cheat on,” Amos wrote McCorkle, referring to an automated system to record maintenance instead of making handwritten entries.

In March 2001 the Department of Defense Inspector General seized computer files from McCorkle and Amos.

McCorkle retired in October 2001.

‘A good pilot’ A few days after the crash, a memorial service was held at the chapel at New River. As the district’s representative, Walter Jones was there.

“I will never forget ... we sat behind Connie Gruber. I did not know her at the time, but that little girl, Brooke…,” the congressman said, getting emotional during an interview with Stars and Stripes last month.

Jones was a relatively new member of the House Armed Services Committee. He didn’t know much about the Osprey, except to follow the lead of his colleague, then-Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., who had convinced him that “we have to save this plane,” Jones said.

In December 2002, he got a letter that Connie Gruber had written to every member of the committee.

“It basically said, ‘These two men deserve to have their integrity restored, and if you are a man of honor and integrity then I’m calling on you to do it,’ ” Jones recalled.

It inspired the congressman to join the families’ cause, which he now says he’ll die before he gives up on. For years the Navy and Marine Corps have resisted requests to clarify

the record. They told the families they regret that the pilots have been blamed in the media. In 2009, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said, “These men do not have blights on their names and need no exoneration.”

So there was none.

But words on the Internet live on forever. In 2009, for example, when a new book on Marine Corps history and a local news channel reported on the crash, each cited pilot error as the cause.

“It’s hard enough to lose someone. But to have the Marine Corps put a shadow over it,” said Trish Brow from the family’s Maryland home. “He was a good pilot.”

Troublesome qualifier Brooke Gruber just had a Sweet 16 party. She’s petite like her mother, with her father’s blue eyes and smile.

While her party was about youth and the future, the past was part of it. Brooks Gruber is always in their hearts, from the gold wings that the mother and daughter wear — Brooks gave Connie the jewelry when they were dating — to how they included him in her party by sharing a slideshow Connie hadn’t shown since his funeral.

“I … felt sad remembering that someone most special to me could not be there to celebrate a very important moment of my life,” Brooke said.

“When people ask me about my father and what happened to him, I don’t want to have to explain and defend all the reasons why it wasn’t his fault.

I want them to know the truth of how he died with honor.”

Matt Brow was 7 when his father’s Osprey crashed. Now 22, he’s thinking of joining the

military. He’s interested in serving even though this long fight has shown him the ugly side of Pentagon bureaucracy.

“But for every instance over the last 15 years that it could have done more … like change two words,” he said, he has come across individual soldiers “who have still made me respect the people in it, and value it.”

“At this point I think I am past any feelings I get from seeing an Osprey in the air,” Matt said. “After it got decommissioned for a while and put back, it did better, and now it’s deployed and actually saving people lives and helping the

war effort. But if everyone’s moving past it, it seems like it would be an easy thing to go back and right the wrongs.”

The closest Jones and the families came to getting their wish was in 2013, when thenMarine Corps Commandant Gen. Amos wrote Minority Whip Rep. Steny Hoyer, DMd., and Jones about the 2000 crash.

“Among the greatest misfortunes in the wake of the tragedy was the mischaracterization — not by the Marines Corps but by others — that pilot error was solely to blame for the mishap,” Amos wrote.

“That characterization failed to adequately account for the many intangibles contributing to the outcome … The MV-22 program did not significantly recognize the potential safety threat from Vortex Ring State.”

So close, but still the words stung — not “solely” to blame.

“We sat down and read that — all three of us [Trish and sons Matt and Mike Brow], silently, in Congressman Jones’ office,” when it came out in 2013, Trish said. They all jumped on the same qualifier, the same hedging they’d received for so long.

Under review The next few weeks may tell whether the families will get the correction they seek — a definitive statement from the DOD with the following words: “After review of many reports, it is my conclusion that Lt. Col. Brow and Major Gruber could not have been responsible for the crash, because they had neither the knowledge nor the training to avert the crash.” The letter and a large packet of support are under review by deputy

secretary Work.

Because the packet reflects “ongoing discussions between senior leadership and Congress,” Work was unavailable to be interviewed.

The change would not affect the official documents or the current Osprey program, Jones said. The lawsuits are over, so there would be no legal ramifications or further monetary gain. (Manufacturers Bell Boeing settled out of court with the families; the details are sealed. A spokeswoman for Bell’s V-22 program deferred comment to the Marine Corps, where a spokesman declined an interview.)

If Work does not approve the change, the families will not give up. “I think this fight only has one end,” Matt Brow said.

He said that while there are memorials to his dad and the crew, clearing his father’s name is one of two tributes that mean the most.

“That, and living our lives well, is the main thing we can do to honor him.”

For Connie, setting the record straight is something she deeply needs to feel at peace. “We proudly accept this, knowing his life sacrifice directly helped pave the way for the safety and success of today’s Osprey,” she said.

“What we don’t accept is the failure of leadership in making it perfectly clear both in the press and in the history of Marine Corps aviation that the aircraft was not ready. The pilots were not properly trained, the mission should never have been flown that night.”

Just as she finished, another Osprey flew over, heading for the base. copp.tara@stripes.com Twitter: @TaraCopp

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MILITARY

Marines chided over study of women in combat

BY H EATH DRUZIN Stars and Stripes

WASHINGTON — Advocates for fully integrating the armed forces on Tuesday accused the Marines of cherry-picking data to bolster the case to keep women from certain combat jobs.

The talk comes ahead of the Thursday deadline for military branches to present evidence for exemptions to a new rule set to go into effect Jan. 1. The rule will open all military jobs to women.

“If I had a daughter, based on all of the comments that are being made … I would question my daughter’s decision to join an organization (the Marine Corps) that was so adamantly opposed to the full equal footing of women,” Marine Lt. Col. Kate Germano said during a media roundtable Tuesday.

Germano and several other active-duty and retired military officers called for all military positions to be open to women, facing the same standards as men. The group took exception to the findings of a nine-month Marine Corps study, which included elaborate battlefield simulations, aimed at examining the impact of integrating women into combat arms units. The conclusions have only been partially released and have raised the specter of unit cohesion problems and increased rates of injuries for women.

A main point of contention is the study looked at the average performance of all the women — as opposed to looking at the possibility that some women could meet standards.

“You cannot compare averages, this has to be an individual evaluation process,” retired Army Col. Ellen Har-

ing said at the roundtable.

Germano, who helped dramatically raise female Marine recruit marksmanship scores at Parris Island before being removed from her position amid complaints about her aggressive style, said there is an understanding in the Marines that women are expected to fail.

“What it essentially came down to was acceptance of lower expectations,” she said.

“What I found was that the leadership was not ready to embrace the changes to make females feel more welcome.”

The Marines did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Thursday is the deadline for all branches of the military to submit proposals for jobs that they believe should remain closed to women. The Marines have been more resistant to such changes than other branches.

Gen. Joseph Dunford, who recently went from commandant of the Marines to chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has reportedly recommended some positions remain closed to women.

The Marines released a truncated four-page summary of their study earlier last month that painted a grim picture of women in combat units. But less than two weeks later, a much longer summary came out with more nuanced conclusions of the impacts, though the Marines still have not released the full report.

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, who has oversight over the Marines, has criticized the study. Defense Secretary Ash Carter will make the ultimate decision about what, if any, jobs remain restricted. druzin.heath@stripes.com Twitter: @Druzin_Stripes

Courtesy of Simon Fraser University

Trevor Greene, a former Canadian soldier who suffered a brain injury during an attack in Afghanistan in 2006, walks with a robotic exoskeleton Sept. 17 at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada.

Exoskeleton helps veteran with brain injury walk again

BY A ARON K IDD Stars and Stripes

Trevor Greene calls himself a “bionic” man.

The former Canadian soldier was told he might never walk again after suffering a brain injury during a 2006 ax attack in Afghanistan. He is now mobile with the help of a robotic exoskeleton on the lower half of his body, according to Simon Fraser University in British Columbia.

Greene — who is able to walk upright with assistance while wearing the custom-made ReWalk device — showed off his progress walking with the exoskeleton Sept. 17 at the school’s Surrey campus, the school said in a statement.

The device has metal rods that run down the sides of his legs and insoles that

See video of the exoskeleton in action stripes.com/go/exoskeleton are placed inside his shoes, Carolyn Sparrey, an assistant professor at SFU’s school of mechatronic systems engineering, told Canadian broadcaster CTV News. It also has small motors at the hip and knee that help propel Greene forward.

This is the first time exoskeleton technology, designed for those with spinal cord injuries, has been used for a person with a brain injury, Sparrey said in the statement.

Dr. Ryan D’Arcy, a neuroscientist and SFU professor, has been working with Greene since 2009 to explore how the brain’s ability to reorganize neural pathways and synapses in response to behaviors,

thoughts and emotions affects motor functions, the statement said.

D’Arcy tracks how the brain rewires itself by collecting functional magnetic resonance imaging scans of Greene’s brain.

In an article published this month in the Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation, D’Arcy and his team say those who suffer traumatic brain injuries can recover physical functions through rehabilitation, even six years after their injuries, challenging current assumptions that long-term recovery isn’t possible, the statement said.

Greene, who hopes one day to walk unassisted, said his goal is to make it to Mount Everest base camp. kidd.aaron@stripes.com Twitter: @kiddaaron

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MILITARY

‘A singular leader’

Retiring Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dempsey hailed at farewell ceremony

BY TARA COPP Stars and Stripes

WASHINGTON — Retiring Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey was hailed Sept. 25 as “a singular leader” who led the military with a steady hand during unsteady times.

In an emotional, family filled ceremony, Dempsey was at once funny and overwhelmed, noting that he felt very much on the last day of his 41-year career as he felt on his first.

Back then, as now, “I was a little nervous. I was humbled to wear the uniform of an Army officer … and I was in love with a girl named Deanie,” Dempsey said, choking up.

As he spoke, Dempsey’s wife, Deanie, his high school sweetheart, wiped her eyes and held one of their nine grandchildren close.

At the full-honors military retirement ceremony at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, Va., on Sept. 25, President Barack Obama said Dempsey’s “wisdom, his vision and his character have helped lead the greatest fighting force the world has ever known. I am extraordinarily grateful to have had him by my side.”

Dempsey’s son, Army Maj. Chris Dempsey, read out his father’s retirement orders. All three of Dempsey’s children served in the Army.

“Attention to orders. Headquarters Department of the Army order number 110-02,” Chris Dempsey said, his voice starting to break. “The following general officer is retired.

Dempsey, Martin E. Rank of general.”

His son then walked away from the microphone, wiping away tears.

The retiring general was introduced as “my friend General Dempsey” by Lizzie Yaggy, a young girl he’s gotten to know through his regular appearances at the military’s Tragedy Assistance Program

for Survivors children’s camps.

Lizzie, according to a Defense Department news release, first met Dempsey when she was 4, after she had lost her father, and asked Dempsey, “Is my Daddy an angel?”

Dempsey, taken aback, decided to start singing to the kids, and a tradition was born.

The programs offer kids who have lost a family member to war the chance to bond with other children in similar situations.

“I think my (United States Military Academy at West Point class of 1974) classmates probably had a few side bets going” on when he would get emotional, Dempsey said. They didn’t have to wait long.

While he cried multiple times, he got a few zingers in, too.

Turning to the president, he noted, “I also want to thank the 22nd, the 23rd, the 24th and the 25th secretaries of defense with whom I’ve served over the last five years,” adding wryly, “Seriously?”

“I’m almost out of water to choke back emotion,” Dempsey said.

Dempsey’s last decade of service was dominated by Iraq. He assumed command of the then-Germany-based 1st Armored Division in Baghdad in 2003. He commanded the 1AD in Iraq for 14 months as the U.S. focused on reconstruction efforts to improve the country’s water, sewage and electrical systems. Dempsey’s term, however, was also marked by deteriorating stability and the earliest indications of the insurgency to follow.

Dempsey returned to Iraq in 2005 to serve for two years as commander of the MultiNational Security Transition Command-Iraq, assigned with the responsibility of training and equipping Iraq’s security forces. He served as the deputy and then as acting commander of U.S. Central Command, and spent the last four years of his

Above: Retiring Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, second from right, shakes hands with his successor, Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr., during Dempsey’s farewell ceremony at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, Va., on Sept.

25. Left: Dempsey poses with his grandchildren.

PHOTOS

military career as the 19th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, serving through the December 2011 drawdown of troops in Iraq, only to see U.S. forces sent back there in 2014.

Dempsey is succeeded by U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, who stepped down this week from his role as commandant of the Marine Corps to become the Joint Chiefs chairman.

In his career, Dempsey was known for his expertise on the complex security situation in the Middle East and for his direct and sometimes blunt strategic assessments.

“In the Situation Room,

BY

M EREDITH TIBBETTS /Stars and Stripes

all listened attentively when Marty offered his advice from the military leadership,” Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said Sept. 25.

Dempsey’s bluntness sometimes led him off-script, generating unwanted headlines at congressional hearings and press briefings. Earlier this year, he ended up calling a Gold Star mother, Debbie Lee, to apologize after a much-publicized remark made to the press that the fall of Ramadi, Iraq, “won’t be the end of the campaign.”

The remarks outraged Lee and others, who understood them to mean that the city where their military sons died did not have strategic value.

Dempsey was also known for the deep impact the loss of soldiers had on his own life. He kept a wooden box engraved “Make it Matter” on his desk; inside are 132 cards — one for every soldier who died under his command in Iraq.

“Over the years, no one has attended more memorials,

wakes or weddings,” Carter said. “For the Dempseys, there are truly no strangers in our military family. To quote Yeats yet again: ‘There are only friends they haven’t met.’ ” In a final tribute to their 41 years of service, the military feted Dempsey and his family with a musical tribute to their life. Dempsey and wife Deanie shared one last dance as the band feted them with their wedding song, “Close to You.” True to tradition, Dempsey then picked up the microphone, leading the second-to-last song, the Irish Ballad, “The Parting Glass.”

“Goodnight and joy be to you all,” Dempsey sang before walking into the arms of his grandchildren and Deanie.

The now-retired grandparents, hands full with their nine young grandkids, walked together off the field with bagpipes and the final goodbye song. copp.tara@stripes.com Twitter: @TaraCopp

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VETERANS

Honor for ‘the greatest hero I know’ Group takes over pilot’s mission to have crewmate awarded for courageous act

BY M ATTHEW M. BURKE Stars and Stripes

First Lt. Carl Fyler’s 25th bombing mission was his last, and the 17 months he spent as a POW could have left him trying to forget the horrors of World War II. Instead, he took on a new mission, to honor Staff Sgt. Joseph Sawicki — the man he called “the greatest hero I know” — for his actions to save two crewmates as their B-17 Flying Fortress spiraled toward the ground.

Fyler died after 60 years of efforts to justify a Medal of Honor for Sawicki, who was killed in the crash.

But his mission lives on, despite the Army’s repeated response that there’s just not enough documentation to confer the nation’s highest military honor.

By the time the B-17 roared toward Bremen, Germany, on Nov. 29, 1943, Sawicki had flown 14 missions as a tail gunner assigned to the 303rd Bombardment Group. Fyler was the pilot of the 11-man crew that day.

“This was to be my 25th mission,” Fyler told author Brian D. O’Neill, according to the book “Half a Wing, Three Engines and a Prayer,” which recounted the bombing run.

“I was so battle weary that I hardly functioned, but I acted.

I did what I thought was right.

Maybe, subconsciously, I knew it would be over, one way or another.”

German fighters and heavy anti-aircraft fire met the bomber formation as it neared the target.

Fyler’s plane dropped its bombs on target, but it was immediately hit with flak. The copilot was wounded in the face, while the waist gunners were slammed against the ceiling.

Damage shut down both right-wing engines; part of the wing was sheared off; and the aircraft’s right stabilizer was

missing.

“The ship nosed up, turning to right,” Fyler said. “I ended up putting both feet on the control to hold the nose down. I knew we were in deep because I could not steer to the west, and home.”

As the plane attempted to limp out of the danger zone, it came under fire again. The top turret gunner was struck in the thigh by a 20 mm shell. Fyler and the navigator were hit with 20 mm shells.

As blood pooled in Fyler’s seat, he knew it would be futile to continue. He told the co-pilot and turret gunner to bail out.

One gun firing Still, Fyler said, he heard one gun firing.

In the rear of the aircraft, Sawicki rattled off rounds at the pursuing Luftwaffe until his right hand and a portion of his arm were blown off, according to documented accounts. His intestines were also at least partially exposed, Fyler wrote in a 1945 account.

As the aircraft spiraled down, Fyler bailed out.

Sawicki crawled to the waist section where he found two gunners — Staff Sgts. Martin Stachowiak and George Fisher — on the floor of the aircraft.

Both were blinded by blood and suffered broken arms.

“With his last ounce of energy, he managed to buckle a chest pack chute on each and drag them to the waist door,” O’Neill wrote. “Pulling the hinge-pin cable, he kicked out the door and wrestled both gunners to the exit, literally booting them out of the faltering aircraft. They were able to pull their own ripcords and safely parachuted into enemy territory. Sgt. Sawicki collapsed from his wounds and went down with the flaming Fortress.”

Seven crewmembers including Fyler were taken prisoner, Army Air Forces documents

state. Fisher was released immediately because he was so badly wounded. Three others were declared missing, but later added to killed-in-action rolls.

The Germans declared Sawicki dead. His body was eventually found, and his remains were repatriated to the U.S. in 1949.

Lifelong fight After the crash, Fyler spent 510 days in the German prisoner-of-war camp Stalag Luft 1, where food was often rotten and guards were known to shoot prisoners who disobeyed strict orders, according to Fyler’s nephew, Kirby Webb.

As the Germans teetered on defeat, the camp commander was ordered to kill the prisoners, Webb said. He refused, and Fyler’s life was spared.

In May 1945, Fyler was in France at an out-processing post for American POWs. Before the gaunt airman could get on a plane, he was called to the camp’s hospital tent, where he found a shrunken man he did not recognize. When the man spoke, he knew it was Stachowiak, according to letters he wrote that were provided to Stars and Stripes.

Stachowiak told him what Sawicki had done.

Two months later, the men put Sawicki up for the Medal of Honor, in a “Form For Questionnaire For Awards Board,” as he was instructed to do by his headquarters.

“Each officer and enlisted man during processing ... at the camps has been requested to complete an awards questionnaire form,” according to a memo from the commanding general of U.S. Strategic Air Forces in Europe, written in June 1945. “It is requested that units scrutinize these forms carefully in order that no deserving personnel is overlooked.”

Sawicki never received hon-

Courtesy of the Fyler family

Army Air Force pilot 1st Lt. Carl Fyler, left, poses with the “Fyler Crew.’’ ors, and it’s unclear what happened to the documentation.

The completed questionnaire was retained by the military.

A copy is kept in the National Archives.

“There is no surviving documentation indicating that a formal award recommendation was ever initiated for SSG Sawicki in 1945,” Army spokesman Paul Prince wrote in an email to Stars and Stripes.

The form was an investigation report on the circumstances of the crash, and should have been forwarded to Sawicki’s chain of command for processing to determine whether he was deserving of a medal.

“We have no record that step ever occurred,” Prince said.

There are several avenues in which a servicemember can be considered for the Medal of Honor, according to the Army’s website on the award. Besides the obvious unilateral avenues of Congress and the president, recommendations are supposed to come up through the chain of command to the Department of the Army’s human resources command and Army decoration boards. The recommendation must then be ratified and passed through Manpower and Reserve Affairs, the Army chief of staff, the service secretary and the secretary of defense before it hits the president’s desk.

Back then, Fyler could only follow the avenues provided to him by the commanding general. The Army Air Forces no longer exists. It later became

the U.S. Air Force.

‘Greatest hero’ Fyler wrote a letter to Sawicki’s family in 1945 telling them what happened on the plane.

“We are glad to hear that his last deed was heroic and unselfish,” they wrote back.

Two years later, on June 19, 1947, then-Capt. Fyler once again requested the award for Sawicki in a Missing Air Crew Report that is on file at the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, Md. The form was used to document crewmembers, the aircraft and the crash.

“Sawicki talked to the two waist gunners as he put their chutes on, and pushed them out the escape hatch,” Fyler wrote. “He is the greatest hero I know.”

Fyler listed Stachowiak and Fisher, who were still alive, as witnesses.

“When I was in France, I wrote this man up for the Congressional Medal for his brave heroic actions,” he wrote in the 1947 letter. “Please see that something is done!”

Fyler wrote in his files years later that he believed the military ignored his requests because he said he never saw any movement on the award.

From the time he was released from that German POW camp, he repeatedly tried to get Sawicki that award. His fight ended with his death in 2009.

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VETERANS

Courtesy of the Fyler family

Until his death, Carl Fyler tried to get the Medal of Honor awarded to Staff Sgt. Joseph Sawicki. In 2008, a year before his death, Fyler received this three-page letter from the Department of the Air Force. To ensure he had all the appropriate paperwork, Fyler wrote “OK’’ next to each item on the checklist on the third page.

FROM PAGE 11

Now, Fyler’s quest has been taken up by a dedicated group of family, friends and researchers hoping to persuade the Army or members of Congress to recognize Sawicki’s efforts.

“Carl tried at least five times to ram the paperwork through,” said Robert Rumsby, 26, an Army veteran and researcher for History Flight, a nonprofit that recently repatriated the remains of approximately 40 lost Marines from WWII’s Battle of Tarawa in the South Pacific.

Rumsby said he resubmitted the application in 2014 to the Army’s decoration board for reconsideration, but again, it was denied.

“It’s a total injustice to what Sawicki did,” Rumsby said.

The Army says it isn’t its fault the award has been repeatedly denied.

“The documents that have been provided to this office in the past are insufficient for reconsideration without new and substantive information beyond the (Missing Air Crew Report) and witness statements by Fyler,” Army spokesman Paul Prince wrote in an email to Stars and Stripes. “The requestor is responsible for assembling a

complete award recommendation package; the Department of the Army has no legal or regulatory burden to supplement a recommendation with additional documentation or provide additional research.”

Prince said the Army does not have records of previous submissions.

America moved on from World War II, but Fyler never did. He married and became a respected dentist in Topeka, Kan., and he continued working on behalf of veterans, Webb said.

Fyler kept detailed records of his efforts for Sawicki.

In 1989, after he saw Sawicki’s story in a veterans’ magazine, he filed an awards claim with Veterans Affairs officials and made inquiries about the location of Sawicki’s body and the injuries he sustained. The information matched what he had been told by witnesses.

Fyler contacted the Air Force awards and decorations branch but was referred to the Army. He wrote letters and lobbied then-Rep. Jim Slattery, D-Kan., to take up Sawicki’s case.

The Army rejected his request that same year, saying the wartime records obtained

from the National Archives and Records Administration in St. Louis were insufficient.

In 1994, Slattery introduced legislation to give Sawicki the award, but it was locked up in committee and never received a vote.

“It is my belief that this bill would have passed had the Michigan delegation, of which Sgt. Sawicki was a constituent, shown support for the initiative,” he wrote to Fyler. “I have tried with great fervor to initiate the necessary support in order to award Sgt. Sawicki and am sorry that my actions show no visible signs of success.”

Fyler pressed on, collecting letters of support for Sawicki from military brass and Kansas senators, including Bob Dole, Pat Roberts and Sam Brownback.

In 1998, acting secretary of the Army Robert Walker denied a request of consideration from Brownback.

“It is my determination that the award does not warrant approval on the merits,” Walker wrote. “Specifically, the documentation submitted is insufficient.”

The last denial came in 2008, a year before Fyler’s death.

Next generation In 2013, Rumsby was combing the nation’s archives for information on remains when he happened upon Fyler’s casualty questionnaire.

He tracked down Webb, Ann Norlin, who had been Fyler’s pastor and close confidant, and Sawicki’s niece, Cynthia Gierada. They banded together to take over Fyler’s mission to see Sawicki honored.

Webb and Norlin gave Rumsby all of Fyler’s files. He submitted the nomination in 2014.

Rumsby said he thought he had a home run on his hands.

He saw no difference between Sawicki’s story and those of many others who have been posthumously honored, he said.

Master Sgt. Woodrow Wilson Keeble received a Distinguished Service Cross for gallantry in Korea after Army officials misplaced letters requesting he receive the Medal of Honor. After his death, his wife fought to have his record reopened. Lawmakers intervened with legislation, and he was awarded the medal in 2008.

In 2014, President Barack Obama awarded Civil War hero 1st Lt. Alonzo Cushing the

Medal of Honor. Prince, the Army spokesman, said, “Original documentation indicating that his commanders intended to recognize him was located at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.” At the time, the Medal of Honor was not awarded posthumously.

Earlier this year, the medals of World War I Army sergeants Henry Johnson and William Shemin were upgraded to Medals of Honor when it was determined they were overlooked because of discrimination.

The Army responded to Rumsby in 2014, saying it couldn’t act on Sawicki’s case until “new, substantive, and material evidence which was not previously known is provided by the requestor.”

With everyone now dead and gone, that is unlikely to happen.

“I am very disappointed that Sgt. Sawicki did not receive the honor he so clearly deserved,” Gierada told Stars and Stripes.

“I am thankful for the perseverance on the part of Capt.

Fyler and his family to tell the story of my uncle’s heroism.” burke.matt@stripes.com

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VETERANS

VA executives abused positions for financial gain, report shows

BY H EATH DRUZIN Stars and Stripes

WASHINGTON — A senior Department of Veterans Affairs manager who was supposed to clean up a beleaguered regional office abused her position for financial gain, part of a wider scheme to give stealth raises to executives, according to a VA Office of Inspector General report released Monday.

The inspector general had been investigating Philadelphia VA Regional Office Director Diana Rubens since March, after it became known that she received nearly $300,000 in compensation to move about 140 miles from Washington to Philadelphia.

While the inspector general’s office concluded that her moving expenses were allowable, it found she and one other executive had manipulated the VA hiring system to create vacancies they sought for financial gain in an era of government pay freezes.

The inspector general has made a criminal referral to the District of Columbia U.S. Attorney’s Office for actions

by Rubens and Kimberly Graves, who is accused of a similar scheme to become director of the St. Paul Veterans Affairs Regional Office. No charges have been filed.

Monday’s report could trigger one of the biggest

shakeups in the VA since the nationwide scandal broke in April 2014, costing then-VA Secretary Eric Shinseki his job. While other VA executives have lost their jobs or resigned under pressure, the latest IG report implicates two senior managers, an undersecretary and two of her deputies.

Rubens and Graves retained their salaries — $181,497 and $173,949, respectively — despite taking new positions with fewer responsibilities at lower rungs on the federal pay scale.

Together they received about $400,000 in moving expenses, and the IG report recommends that the VA consider recouping those costs.

When Rubens took over the Philadelphia office in June 2014, VA officials said she was sent to clean up a regional office beset by problems including rodent-infested conditions, boxes of ignored mail that might have cost countless veterans their benefits, and a manager who asked employees to pay his wife to communicate with the dead at a party. However, the VA didn’t seek out Rubens. The report says that Rubens used her position as deputy undersecretary for field operations to transfer the former Philadelphia director and position herself to get the job.

In reviewing job changes

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for 22 senior VA executives, the IG found a pattern of employees being moved to increase their salaries or keeping their salaries after responsibilities were reduced.

The VA paid $1.3 million in moving expenses for those executives and increased their salaries by more than $300,000.

“We found that Ms. Rubens inappropriately used her position of authority for personal and financial benefit when she participated personally and substantially in creating the Philadelphia (Veterans Affairs Regional Office) vacancy and then volunteering for the vacancy,” the report said.

Veterans Benefits Administration management “used moves of senior executives as a method to justify annual salary increases.”

The report also recommended that the VA consider disciplinary action against VA Undersecretary for Benefits Allison Hickey and two deputy undersecretaries for their roles in Rubens’ move to Philadelphia. Hickey has said she handpicked Rubens for the job and has vehemently defended her in the face of growing public and Congressional scrutiny over Rubens’ moving expenses.

Speaking to a Stars and Stripes reporter at the Philadelphia VA in June, Hickey said of Rubens, “I do see her

This publication is a compilation of stories from Stars and Stripes, the editorially independent newspaper authorized by the Department of Defense for members of the military community. The contents of Stars and Stripes are unofficial, and are not to be considered as the official views of, or endorsed by, the U.S. government, including the Defense Department or the military services. The U.S. Edition of Stars and Stripes is published jointly by Stars and Stripes and this newspaper.

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© Stars and Stripes, 2015

JOE G ROMELSKI /Stars and Stripes

Diana Rubens, director of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Philadelphia office, is sworn in at a House hearing in April. as part of the solutions. I sent her here because I needed one of the singularly most mature, experienced leaders I could find in our system.”

In light of the report, House Committee on Veterans Affairs Chairman Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Florida, said “Under Secretary Hickey and others in VA leadership knew they could use fear, intimidation, and timely relocation incentives to coerce subordinates to relocate to jobs they didn’t apply for” and that he will be examining whether VA officials misled his committee in testimony about Rubens in April.

“The IG’s report proves that VA’s corrosive culture extends to the highest levels of (Veterans Benefits Administration) leadership and must be immediately rooted out once and for all,” Miller said in the statement. “This report is simply the latest in a long line of investigations showing VA officials helping themselves instead of helping America’s veterans.”

VA officials did not respond to questions about the current employment status of employees singled out in the

report or a request to interview Hickey. Hickey did not respond to an email.

In response to the report, the VA released a statement saying it will conduct a 30-day review of all incentive and relocation procedures.

“In addition, VA will consider all the evidence presented by the IG, collect any additional evidence necessary, and take appropriate accountability actions,” the statement read.

A woman who answered the phone in Rubens’ office Monday said she was not at work, and Rubens did not respond to an email asking for comment.

The inspector general’s office, who initiated the investigation at the behest of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs and has been criticized for being too cozy with VA leadership, initially released a bare-bones report without mentioning names but later released the full report after receiving Freedom of Information Act requests, according to VA OIG spokeswoman Cathy Gromek. druzin.heath@stripes.com Twitter: @Druzin_Stripes

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