Stars and Stripes 7.31.15

Volume 7, No. 32 ŠSS 2015

FRIDAY, JULY 31, 2015

Remains of 36 Marines returned to US soil more than 70 years after they were lost in World War II Page 2

U.S. Marine Sgt. Nolan Luckett plays a bugle during a ceremony honoring 36 unidentified Marines found at a battlefield on the Pacific atoll of Tarawa, after their remains arrived at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Honolulu on Sunday.

M ARCO G ARCIA /AP

For information please contact Waverly Williams 803-774-1237 or waverly@theitem.com

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Friday, July 31, 2015

MILITARY

BACK ON US SOIL PHOTOS

BY

M ARCO G ARCIA /AP

U.S. Marines unload, carry and honor the remains of 36 unidentified Marines found at a World War II battlefield during a ceremony at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Honolulu on Sunday.

70 years after a ‘most significant’ battle, 36 Marines honored in Hawaii Stars and Stripes

CAMP H.M. SMITH, Hawaii — The remains of 36 Marines who died at the Battle of Tarawa have arrived back on U.S. soil more than 70 years after they went missing during World War II. The remains, which include posthumous Medal of Honor recipient 1st Lt. Alexander Bonnyman Jr., arrived

in Hawaii on Sunday and will be returned to their families for burial with full military honors once positive identification is complete.

A repatriation ceremony was held Saturday on Tarawa, an atoll in the central Pacific Ocean where the remains were uncovered in May by Florida-based History Flight Inc. The nonprofit group works with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency

to recover U.S. servicemembers.

“I was very pleased to learn of the discovery of the remains of our Marines on the island of Tarawa — one of our most significant and contested battles,” Gen. Joseph Dunford, commandant of the Marine Corps, said in a statement. “This battle demonstrated the indomitable fighting spirit of our Marines. It was also the first contested landing against a heavily

fortified enemy, and a turning point in the development in our amphibious capability. The lessons learned at Tarawa paved the way for our success in the Pacific campaign and eventual end to the war.”

More than 1,000 Marines were killed in the Battle of Tarawa, which was fought over three days in November 1943. news@stripes.com

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MILITARY

German park employees charged in girl’s death US soldier believes management to blame for his daughter’s fatal accident on ride

BY JENNIFER H. SVAN AND M ARCUS K LOECKNER Stars and Stripes

KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany — Three employees have been charged in the death last year of an American soldier’s daughter on a ride at Holiday Park in Hassloch, German prosecutors announced last week.

Amber Walker, 11, died Aug. 15, 2014, after she fell or was knocked from the Spinning Barrels ride and was run over several times by its rotating platforms. The ride — also known as Breakdance — started without warning while she and her mother, Claudia, were standing on the platform next to one of the barrels.

The German prosecutor’s office in Frankenthal cited the three park employees for several safety violations leading up to the incident. The ride’s operator, the operator’s direct training supervisor and an operations manager who oversees employee training face fines or prison sentences of up to five years if found guilty of negligent homicide.

Holiday Park is popular with American servicemembers and their families, many of whom are stationed about an hour or less away at Air Force and Army bases in the state of Rhineland-Pfalz and elsewhere in Germany.

Prosecutors contend Amber’s death would likely have been prevented if the ride’s 22-year-old operator had checked to make sure the ride’s entrance door had been closed, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement. The operator was the only ride attendant at the time.

Bernd Beitz, the manager of Holiday Park, said he couldn’t comment on the charges because the park had not seen the official charge documents.

He said the park had cooperated with the investigation and provided all the information required.

“This was a very shocking and very tragic accident in the history of Holiday Parks,” he said. “We try to help, find the cause and make sure this does not happen again.”

Amber and her mother were the last ones to enter the ride, Claudia Walker, 33, said in an interview with Stars and Stripes on Thursday. It was late morning and the park wasn’t very crowded at the time. The gate behind which a line normally forms was open and the ride was about twothirds full, with the other riders already seated, she said.

“It wasn’t closed off. That’s why we assumed it was OK to get on. There was nothing that indicated it was about to start,” she said. “To me, it just looked like they were waiting for the ride to fill up before they started.”

The safety latch on the barrel the Walkers walked up to was down, so they couldn’t step in, Walker said. As they stood on either side of the barrel, the ride suddenly jerked.

Walker said she signaled to her daughter that “we should get off,” but the ride started moving before they could.

The ride’s operator neglected to give a verbal warning to passengers that the ride was about to begin, prosecutors said, another contributing factor in the accident.

“Due to the sudden start of the ride, the girl stumbled into the danger zone between two platforms,” prosecutors said.

The operator’s training supervisor is criminally liable for failing to inform the operator during training that giving a verbal warning before starting the ride was mandatory, prosecutors said.

The operations manager was faulted for not ensuring the proper safety regulations were being followed.

The three employees said they did nothing wrong, according to prosecutors. A trial date has not been set.

Claudia Walker, who is Ger-

C OURTESY

OF

C LAUDIA WALKER

Amber Walker, then 10, stands between her parents, Claudia and Edmond, a U.S. Army staff sergeant, at Heidelberg Castle in Heidelberg, Germany, in 2013. Amber was killed on a ride at Holiday Park in Hassloch, Germany, in August 2014. man, and her husband, Army Staff Sgt. Edmond Walker, a light-wheel-vehicle mechanic assigned to U.S. Army Garrison Wiesbaden, live in Kelstersbach.

Walker said she worries that the safety lapses that led to the death of the couple’s only child could be repeated and could point to a systemic problem of lax employee training and safety checks at the park.

Whether the ride was supposed to start with an open entry door is an unresolved question, she said. German safety inspectors suggested more than one attendant supervise the ride, Walker said, citing a technical report on the ride that police and prosecutors used in the investigation and that the Walkers have a copy of. It’s not certain if the microphone operators are to use to give a verbal warning was even working, she said.

The ride has not been in operation since the incident.

Edmond Walker thinks the blame for his daughter’s death lies squarely with park management — and not the young

guy “who pushed the button,” he said.

“Even if they had one more extra guy working on the ride, my daughter would be alive today,” he said. “It’s a systemic problem at the park if they place the life of (all the riders) into the hands of one guy.”

The park’s insurance company paid Claudia Walker 19,000 euros in compensation for her daughter’s death, she said.

She unsuccessfully tried to get U.S. Army Europe to place the park off-limits to U.S. forces personnel in Europe.

After conducting a safety assessment of the park in April, USAREUR found “that Holiday Park does not have a significant accident history that would indicate systemic safety problems,” the report says.

The only other safety-related event documented at the park occurred in April 2010, when the Expedition GeForce roller coaster jumped the tracks, according to USAREUR. The accident was later found to have been caused

by a broken axle. No serious injuries were reported.

The Park has been operated by the Plopsa Group since November 2010.

Claudia Walker said she disagrees with USAREUR’s findings. She said her husband asked the USO to stop selling tickets to the park. Holiday Park tickets are currently not available at the USO, an employee in Kaiserslautern said, referring questions to management. A USO manager declined to comment about it.

“If people decide to go there, I just want people to make an informed decision,” Walker said.

“It was one of my daughter’s favorite rides,” she said of Spinning Barrels. “It was one of the rides we always went on.”

Her daughter loved to paint, do her nails and make and listen to music, she said.

She was learning to play the upright bass at her German school. “She was very loving, very loyal.” svan.jennifer@stripes.com kloeckner.marcus@stripes.com

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Friday, July 31, 2015

MILITARY

Navy downsizes plans for Marine facilities on Guam

BY WYATT OLSON Stars and Stripes

Photos courtesy of Kaitlyn’s Foundation

The family of Kaitlyn Samuels, shown as a child on a horse used in her physical therapy, has agreed to a cash settlement with the Defense Department after battling a 2010 decision by Tricare not to cover the unconventional treatment.

DOD settles with Navy family over medical claim denials

BY ERIK SLAVIN Stars and Stripes

YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Japan — The Defense Department has agreed to a cash settlement with a retired Navy captain and his wife after the Defense Health Agency denied their daughter’s Tricare claims for physical therapy using a horse, the family said last week.

Retired Capt. Mark Samuels and his wife, Jennifer, received compensation for nearly one year of retroactively denied claims on behalf of their daughter, Kaitlyn, along with money to cover five more years of therapy, the family said.

Kaitlyn was born in 1996 with severe brain impairments that do not allow her muscles to function properly. She also has neuromuscular scoliosis, which curves her spine from side to side.

The settlement was approved June 8 and the case was formally dismissed earlier this month in Dallas, according to federal court documents.

“We are very satisfied and definitely feel like we won the battle,” Jennifer Samuels told Stars and Stripes.

Tricare notified the Samuels family in June 2010 that Kaitlyn’s use of a horse during her physical therapy sessions

A cash settlement will allow Kaitlyn’s family to continue paying for horse therapy that they say helps with her brain and neuromuscular impairments. was not covered because it constituted “unproven treatment.”

The Samuels argued that Kaitlyn used the horse much like a dynamic balance beam, and that the doctor-prescribed therapy was the only method improving her condition.

After Tricare denied the claims, Kaitlyn tried more expensive conventional therapy that Tricare deemed acceptable. Her spine curved significantly and rapidly as a result, according to the court complaint.

“After therapy balls and benches proved useless, the family resumed using a horse

as a tool and began paying out of pocket for the expenses,” the complaint stated.

A Tricare hearing officer ruled in the family’s favor upon appeal, deeming therapy in a traditional setting for Kaitlyn “a waste of government money,” according to court documents. Nevertheless, Tricare set aside the hearing officer’s findings in October 2012 and denied coverage.

The family filed a federal suit in August against the DOD, the secretary of defense and the Defense Health Agency, which runs Tricare.

“Although we had a great case … we decided to settle so our litigation would not hinder political assistance with Kaitlyn’s Law,” Jennifer Samuels said.

Kaitlyn’s Law was introduced in the House of Representatives in 2013 as the Rehabilitative Therapy Parity for Military Beneficiaries Act, but the bill did not advance beyond the committee level.

The brief law would clarify that therapeutic exercises involving beams, horses and other implements are part of “rehabilitative therapy” and subject to coverage for families with appropriate military health insurance policies. slavin.erik@stripes.com Twitter: @eslavin_stripes

To avoid infringing on Guam’s culturally sensitive areas, the Navy has significantly downsized plans to expand facilities on the island needed for the relocation of Marines from Okinawa.

The Navy issued the final supplement to a 2010 environmental impact statement, or EIS, that assessed the potential consequences of establishing a live-fire training range complex, camp, family housing area and required infrastructure. This version differs from an earlier draft by limiting military upgrades to property already owned by the federal government.

The Navy altered its plans in part because of public opposition to proposed construction along Route 15 in the Pagat coastal area, a revered spot that holds ancient indigenous Chamorro graves and archeological sites.

Construction would include a camp area at the Naval Computer Telecommunications site at Finegayan and family housing and a live-fire training range complex on Northwest Field at Andersen Air Force Base. When the original EIS was issued in 2010, the Navy was planning to relocate approximately 8,600 Marines and about 9,000 dependents from Okinawa, whose residents have long been demanding a reduction in the U.S. military presence. But in 2012, Washington and Tokyo jointly announced that the number of Marines moving to Guam would be reduced to about 5,000, along with about 1,300 dependents.

With the smaller relocation, the Navy concluded that the area for the camp and family housing area in Guam could be significantly reduced. The supplemental EIS calls for construction over a period of 13 years, instead of the seven years laid out in the original plan. Plans for the camp, or cantonment area, have been downsized from 2,580 acres to about 1,700 acres, allowing the Navy to use existing federal land. Guam’s delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives, Madeleine Z. Bordallo, said in a statement that she’s pleased

with the Navy’s revisions.

“While there is no perfect solution ... I appreciate that the Department of Defense seriously considered alternative locations and ideas presented by stakeholders in the community,” she said. “It is time that we move forward with this program, and with release of the final SEIS, we continue to build on the progress in last year’s defense bill which freed up unprecedented Government of Japan funds to support the relocation of Marines from Okinawa to Guam.”

Some of the Navy’s previous decisions on Guam preparations remain unchanged. Those include improvements to the Apra Harbor wharf, relocation of U.S. Marine Corps Aviation Combat Element facilities to Andersen Air Force Base, development of the north gate and access road at Andersen, air embarkation facilities and the non-live-fire training area on Andersen South.

The Marines’ move to Guam has stretched out longer than initially planned. Most recently they have talked about arriving sometime in the next decade. The EIS website says the timeline is dependent on Congressional funding support and when facilities are built, but said the first units could be expected by 2020 with an initial Marine Air-Ground Task Force capability to be established by 2023.

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Friday, July 31, 2015

EUROPE

Soldiers finish testing artillery fuses

BY M ICHAEL S. DARNELL Stars and Stripes

VILSECK, Germany — American soldiers here on Tuesday finished testing a new fuse with a guidance system that both increases accuracy and decreases the risk that errant artillery rounds will detonate.

It was the first time U.S. troops in Germany have used howitzer shells mounted with the M1156 Precision Guidance Kit. The testing began Thursday and continued through Tuesday. It was conducted by artillerymen from the 173rd Airborne and the 2nd Cavalry Regiment.

Representatives of several foreign militaries observed the training on Thursday and Friday.

“Circular error probable is the measure we use for the accuracy of artillery,” said Army Lt. Col. Anthony Gibbs, product manager for guided precision munitions and mortar systems. “With this fuse, we’re able to take that from a couple hundred meters, roughly, down to a 50-meter circle.”

The M1156 Precision Guidance Kit with which the fuses are equipped includes a global positioning system and fins to

steer the shell.

An artillery shell fitted with a regular fuse will land only where it’s aimed. A PGKequipped shell has the ability to pick up a GPS signal and make minute corrections while in flight so it can land much closer to the target, effectively turning an unguided round into a smart shell.

“It does not arm if it’s going to fall a certain distance from the target,” Gibbs said. “Basically, draw a circle around the target. If it’s outside of that circle the round will not arm and the round will not go off.

It allows us to limit collateral damage in the target area.”

That capability has piqued the interest of several NATO member nations, including Germany, which had representatives observing the test fire at Vilseck on Thursday and Friday. Army officials at the range said they hoped to garner even more attention in October when they’re scheduled to run another test of this new fuse, this time on a German weapons platform system.

While attention-grabbing, the Precision Guidance Kit fuses come with a price. Army Col. Willie Coleman said the new GPS-enabled fuses cost less than $10,000 apiece.

MICHAEL S. DARNELL /Stars and Stripes

Soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team practice loading an artillery shell using the M1156 Precision Guidance Kit fuse at Vilseck, Germany, on Thursday.

The Army uses a variety of “dumb” fuses, each with its own price point. One of the most common, the multi-option fuse, costs approximately $500 each, said Tim Rider, a spokesman for the Picatinny Arsenal, the research and development group that manages much of the U.S. military’s

ammunition supply.

Coleman argues that the cost is well justified. Not only will artillery units no longer have to essentially waste their initial shot — fired as a spotter — but the increased accuracy will cut down on the total number of rounds that need to be fired

An earlier version of the fuse has shown promising results in Afghanistan since being supplied as part of a 2013 urgent materiel release.

“It’s the future of artillery,” Coleman said. “No other army has something like this. It’s definitely a game changer.” darnell.michael@stripes.com

Navy to create missile defense task force in Europe

BY STEVEN BEARDSLEY Stars and Stripes

NAPLES, Italy — The Navy will create a task force for ballistic missile defense at its European headquarters here in an effort to consolidate command of new anti-missile ships and shore sites.

Task Force 64 will have operational and tactical command of ballistic missile defense, or BMD, and integrated air and missile defense assets assigned to Navy forces in Europe and Africa, the Navy said in a directive posted online over the weekend. Those assets include BMD ships operating out of Spain and landbased missile interceptor sites still under construction in Romania and Poland.

The task force falls under U.S. 6th Fleet and will be led by a Navy captain with a planning staff. The move, announced by Chief of Naval Operations Jonathan Greenert and scheduled to be implemented in October, recognizes the growing number of resources devoted to BMD in the theater in recent years.

The U.S. is the primary contributor to the European missile defense shield, known as the European Phased Adaptive Approach. Four guided-missile destroyers equipped with Aegis radar and missile interceptors are being stationed at a Navy base in Rota, Spain, for regular patrols.

An Aegis Ashore interceptor site in Deveselu, Romania, is expected to be operational by the end of the year. An-

other, in Redzikowo, Poland, is planned for deployment in 2018. Both sites are being run by the Navy.

Other components under the U.S. contribution to the missile shield include a command structure at Ramstein Air Base in Germany and a radar facility in Turkey. NATO allies are making other contributions to the shield.

The scheme has caused a major rift with Russia, which says NATO missile defense plans are aimed against its own nuclear missile arsenal. The U.S. and its NATO allies insist the defense system is meant to protect Europe from potentially hostile countries, such as Iran, but Moscow has countered that Iran doesn’t have any missiles capable of reaching Europe.

Greenert and other military officials have questioned the sustainability of the BMD mission in recent months, citing high demand for the ships in several theaters, including the Pacific, the high cost of converting destroyers and cruisers into BMD-capable platforms, and future funding uncertainty.

The 6th Fleet has five other task forces, all numbered by mission. Task Force 63 oversees civilian sealift ships; Task Force 65 controls surface ships deployed to the region; Task Force 67 is in charge of maritime patrol in the region; Task Force 68 oversees expeditionary forces including Seabees; and Task Force 69 is responsible for submarine warfare. beardsley.steven@stripes.com

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MILITARY

Many jobs in military still closed to women

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno testifies before the Senate Committee on Armed Services in Washington on Jan. 28.

JOE G ROMELSKI /Stars and Stripes

BY WYATT OLSON Stars and Stripes

Odierno says US could have prevented Islamic State rise Stars and Stripes

WASHINGTON — Outgoing Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno told Fox News that the U.S. could have prevented the rise of the Islamic State group if it had remained fully engaged in Iraq rather than remove all its troops at the end of 2011.

“If we had stayed a little more engaged, I think maybe it might have been prevented,” Odierno said in an interview on July 21. “I’ve always believed the United States played the role of honest broker between all the groups and when we pulled ourselves out, we lost that role.”

President Barack Obama’s decision to withdraw all American troops at the end of 2011 has come under fire before from critics in Congress and the media.

Odierno’s criticism is noteworthy because he served longer in Iraq than any other U.S. general and commanded all U.S. and coalition forces there from 2008 until 2010. He is weeks away from retirement after 39 years in uniform.

“It’s frustrating to watch it,” Odierno said. “I go back to the work we did in 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 and we got it to a place that was really good. Violence was low, the economy was growing, politics looked like it was heading in the right direction.”

‘ If we had stayed a

little more engaged, I think maybe it might have been prevented.

I’ve always believed the United States played the role of honest broker between all the groups and when we pulled ourselves out, we lost that role.

’

Gen. Ray Odierno

In 2009, Odierno recommended maintaining 30,000-35,000 U.S. troops after the end of 2011 in a training and advisory role but the White House rejected the recommendation after the Iraqis turned down American demands that remaining forces be shielded from prosecution or lawsuits.

When fighters from the Islamic State, also known by acronyms ISIS and ISIL, swarmed across northern and western Iraq last year, the White House did not

seek Odierno’s advice directly despite his years of service in Iraq.

“All my work was given to Chairman Dempsey,” Odierno said, referring to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey. “I never talked directly to the president about it at that time, but I talked to the secretary of defense and I’m sure he relayed all of my thoughts.”

During the interview, Odierno expressed concerns about deep cuts to the Army from 570,000 troops in 2010 to near 490,000 today. The Army recently announced an additional cut of 40,000 troops, which will pare down the Army to 450,000 soldiers, below levels when al-Qaida launched the 9/11 attacks.

“In my mind, we don’t have the ability to deter. The reason we have a military is to deter conflict and prevent wars. And if people believe we are not big enough to respond, they miscalculate,” Odierno said.

“Two years ago, we didn’t think we had a problem in Europe,” he added. “(Now) Russia is reasserting themselves. We didn’t think we’d have a problem again in Iraq and ISIS has emerged. So, with Russia becoming more of a threat, with ISIS becoming more of a threat, in my mind, we are on a dangerous balancing act right now with capability.”

Less than a year from an integration deadline, nearly a quarter-million positions remain closed to women in the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines as of March, along with 25,700 positions still closed to women by the U.S. Special Operations Command, according to Government Accountability Office data.

The four services have opened up 91,000 positions for women since January 2013, when the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff rescinded a 1994 rule that prohibited women from being assigned to certain ground combat units.

Regardless of the prohibition, more than 800 women have been wounded and 130 have died while deployed to operations in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001.

The Department of Defense has required the services to integrate women into the remaining closed positions by the beginning of next year, but the department has no plans to monitor progress after that date, the GAO said.

The services and SOCOM are conducting studies to “identify and mitigate potential integration challenges” in areas such as unit cohesion, women’s health, facilities modifications, equipment, uniforms and “interest in serving,” the GAO said on July 20.

As of May, the secretary of the Navy was the only military department secretary to recommend an exception to policy to keep positions closed to women on three classes of ships — frigates, mine countermeasure ships and patrol coastal craft. The Navy said the berths on the ships would need to be retrofitted, but the ships are close enough to decommissioning that it would be an inefficient use of money. olson.wyatt@stripes.com

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Friday, July 31, 2015

VETERANS

Toasting survivors Beer created to honor veteran sailors of the USS Indianapolis

BY CARLOS BONGIOANNI Stars and Stripes

Those who survived the 1945 sinking of the USS Indianapolis tell some pretty incredible tales — unembellished accounts of four hellish days spent adrift in sharkinfested waters, where 880 sailors died.

This tall one — Survivor’s Tale Pale Ale, produced by Mare Island Brewery in California — is for them.

Two years ago, organizers of the annual USS Indianapolis Survivors Reunion were searching for themes — other than the ship’s sinking — to commemorate. Peggy McCall Campo, the reunion coordinator and secretary for the survivors organization, asked her father, Donald McCall, for some happier history on the ship.

The Navy veteran — a petty officer 2nd class when the Indy sunk July 30, 1945, after being hit by two torpedoes from a Japanese submarine — was one of 317 sailors to survive the ordeal, which resulted in the most casualties at sea in the history of the U.S. Navy.

McCall told her of his time at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, where the Indy took refuge after it was hit by a kamikaze bomb during the Battle of Okinawa. Nine sail-

ors were killed in the March 31, 1945, attack that forced the ship to leave the battle and limp back to the states.

“I asked my dad what he did at Mare Island,” said Campo, 65.

“He said they lived on the ship while it was in dry dock, but would take a bus to wherever for liberty. They went to San Francisco, to dance clubs.

They’d have beers in town.”

Mare Island would prove to be the last stateside port the Indy would see before it was sent on a top-secret mission to Tinian Island carrying the components of the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. After that mission, the Indy was on its way to the Philippines when it was sunk.

Campo did online research on Mare Island and discovered a brewery that specialized in making beers with nautical-themed names. She contacted the company and made a pitch to have a beer made for the Indy survivors.

Ryan Gibbons, co-founder of Mare Island Brewery, said he was “flabbergasted” when Campo informed him that the Indy spent time at Mare Island.

“My dad was big into Navy history,” said Gibbons. “I knew about the Indy, but not that it was at Mare Island.”

The information surprised

‘ We’ll give each survivor a couple (of

the beers) to take home, and we’ll give flyers to the families to order some.

’

Peggy McCall Campo organizer of USS Indianapolis Survivors Reunion

Courtesy of A Way Out Productions

A bottle of Survivor’s Tale Pale Ale sits atop an American flag. Mare Island Brewery made the specialty beer to honor the survivors of the USS Indianapolis at their annual reunion in Indianapolis.

Gibbons all the more because his brewery, which launched its first beer in 2013, was intended to help preserve the history of the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, which Congress shuttered in 1996.

Based on that rich naval heritage, Gibbons said he has “more ideas for beers than he has recipes.”

The company has unveiled six specialty beers that it delivers to local establishments: “Saginaw Golden Ale,” “Coal Shed Stout,” “Hydraulic Sand-

wich IPA,” “Shipwright’s Porter,” “Farragut’s Farmhouse Ale” and “Angles and Dangles American Blonde Ale.” Each beer reflects a naval theme with famous ships, personages or terms. The company’s website, mareislandbrewingco. com, gives a brief description of each and what the names mean.

On Saturday, during the Indy’s reunion banquet, Gibbons presented six cases of his new concoction, “Survivor’s Tale.”

Campo said they’ll serve one cold beer to each of the survivors who are registered to attend the event, which ended Sunday. She said the rest of the beer will be given to the survivors or their families. Of the 317 sailors who survived the sinking, only 36 are still alive, including her father, who is 90.

“We’ll give each survivor a couple to take home, and we’ll give flyers to the families to order some,” Campo said. bongioanni.carlos@stripes.com

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Friday, July 31, 2015

MILITARY

Bergdahl at scene of California drug raid

Purple Hearts hinge on FBI investigation

BY COREY DICKSTEIN Stars and Stripes

Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was released after being held captive for five years by the Taliban, was present when a drug team raided a northern California marijuana-growing operation earlier this month, according to multiple news reports.

The former POW was released last year in a controversial prisoner swap. He was charged with desertion and faces a court-martial stemming from his 2009 disappearance from his unit while serving in Afghanistan.

At the time of the California raid, Bergdahl was on authorized leave visiting friends in the area. According to the Anderson Valley Advertiser, Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman said Bergdahl “readily produced his military ID,” was not involved in the marijuana production and obeyed law enforcement as several arrests were made.

Bergdahl, who was not arrested, was transported at the Pentagon’s request to nearby Santa Rosa, Calif., where he was picked up by an Army escort and transported back to his duty station near Washington, according to the report.

His Article 32 hearing is scheduled for September. dickstein.corey@stripes.com @CDicksteinDC

BY TRAVIS J. TRITTEN Stars and Stripes

N AOMI VAND USER /Courtesy of the U.S. Navy

Equipment offload Landing Craft Utility 1631 prepares to offload equipment onto the forward-deployed amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard on Sunday. Bonhomme Richard is the lead ship of the Bonhomme Richard Expeditionary Strike Group and is on patrol in the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations.

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WASHINGTON — The Marine Corps said last week that it is preparing Purple Heart packages for its four servicemembers killed in the Chattanooga, Tenn., shooting on July 16, but the decorations will depend on an ongoing federal investigation into the shooter.

So far, the FBI has said Mohamad Youssef Abdulazeez appeared to be a “homegrown violent extremist” who operated on his own, although its investigation is ongoing. The agency has not ruled out that the shooter had been radicalized by others.

New Purple Heart criteria passed by Congress in December requires the perpetrator of an attack be in contact or inspired by a terrorist group, and that could rule out the four Marines and the sailor who were killed.

“The Purple Heart packages have been prepared but eligibility must be determined through the FBI’s investigation,” Marine spokesman Maj. Clark Carpenter said.

Abdulazeez shot up a stripmall recruiting center before firing on the Naval Operational Support Center, killing Gunnery Sgt. Thomas J. Sullivan, Sgt. Carson Holmquist, Staff Sgt. David Wyatt and Lance Cpl. Skip Wells.

The Navy said on July 24 it is following protocol and waiting for the outcome of the FBI investigation before compiling any medal paperwork for Petty Officer 2nd Class Randall Smith, 26, who was critically wounded and died later.

The FBI investigation results will go to an awards board in the Marine Corps and the Navy and will be weighed

against medal criteria, according to a Pentagon spokesman. The board will make a recommendation to Navy Secretary Ray Mabus for a final determination.

Attacks on military personnel by lone gunmen are an increasing threat in the United States and have redefined the traditional battlefield, as well as the criteria for the Purple Heart, which is a symbol of combat sacrifice with roots in the Revolutionary War. The award comes with valuable, combat-related benefits for wounded servicemembers.

The expanded eligibility requirements have resulted in Purple Hearts for victims of the 2009 shooting by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan at Fort Hood, Texas, and for victims of another deadly shooting that killed two soldiers outside a Little Rock, Ark., recruiting center. Both attackers had connections to al-Qaida.

An FBI spokesman in Chattanooga did not immediately return requests for comment from Stars and Stripes.

The agency held a news conference July 25 and said it was still tracking down hundreds of leads in the case. Abdulazeez, who was killed by local police, wrote blog posts before the attack comparing life to a prison and praising devout figures in Islam.

Still, the FBI has revealed no evidence nor confirmed a direct link to terrorist groups or ideology. “We believe he acted on his own that day,” FBI special agent Ed Reinhold said, according to the Los Angeles Times. “We don’t have any indication anyone else was assisting him.” tritten.travis@stripes.com Twitter: @Travis_Tritten

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