Mainers tell about tent blast

loading...

The Rev. David Sivret had just said grace before eating lunch in a mess tent at Camp Marez in Mosul, Iraq, on Tuesday when the bomb exploded, killing 22 and wounding 60. Two of the dead were from Maine.

Sivret is rector of churches in Eastport and Calais but is serving as a chaplain with the Maine Army National Guard’s 133rd Engineer Battalion. He sent a note to the Episcopal Church’s Diocese of Maine after the attack:

“On Dec. 21 at approximately noon I had just sat down to have lunch with Maj. John Nelson, the battalion’s chief medical officer,” Sivret wrote. “I had just said grace when I saw a bright flash. I don’t know how long it was before I woke up on the floor about 10 feet from where I had been sitting down. I looked around, keeping my head down. Then I realized I couldn’t hear.”

Sivret then remembered his calling.

“I got up and started doing what God has given me to do: minister to soldiers and civilians alike. There were many soldiers and civilians hurt, dying and dead. I prayed with the injured as best I could.”

He then located Nelson, or “Doc,” as Sivret calls him, in the kitchen area, caring for the injured.

“We teamed up for a time and worked together,” he wrote. Later, Sivret wrote, “I found the area set up for the morgue and began giving Last Rites.”

Sivret then realized that “I was one of the walking wounded,” having suffered injury to his right ear. “I also found a very, very small piece of metal sticking into my pants into my right knee.”

The chaplain then searched for two missing members of the 133rd.

“I found them where I didn’t want to find them – in the morgue,” Sivret wrote. “This is always very difficult but this was even more so in that I was the chaplain who officiated at one’s wedding and the other soldier was a son of one of my classmates.”

Sgt. Christopher Rushlau is a cook for the National Guard’s 133rd Engineer Battalion. He was eating lunch when a bomb exploded in the mess tent in Mosul, Iraq.

Rushlau was wounded by one or more pieces of shrapnel, his brother Geoffrey Rushlau reported Thursday, and was awaiting surgery in a military hospital in Germany.

Geoffrey Rushlau is the elected district attorney for Waldo, Knox, Lincoln and Sagadahoc counties. Reached by phone in Wiscasset, he said his brother Christopher, 49, had been in Iraq with the Guard unit since March, other than a brief leave home in September.

“I talked to him this morning and last night,” Rushlau said. “They’re still waiting to do the surgery.”

Christopher was sedated when his brother called him Wednesday night. He was more coherent Thursday morning, initiating the call back to Maine, his brother said.

Rushlau has been in the National Guard for more than 20 years, his brother said. For a time he was a medic, but most recently his specialty has been cooking. Geoffrey Rushlau said he understood that the mess tent at the Mosul base was operated by a contractor, that his brother would cook when the battalion was in the field.

Christopher graduated from law school three years ago, his brother said, but has not yet taken the bar exam. He has never married and has no children.

“I was reassured fairly early on,” Geoffrey Rushlau said. “He asked one of his comrades to send an e-mail to me Tuesday night,” several hours after the explosion.

Gov. John Baldacci called Rushlau in Germany on Thursday morning, and Sgt. Harold Freeman Jr. of Gorham, who also was wounded in the attack.

An e-mail sent to the Bangor Daily News by Jeff Woodside, a retired member of the Air Force whose wife is serving with the Air Force near Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, reported contact with Rushlau.

“I was able to talk with Sgt. Rushlau for quite some time even though he was hooked up to a breathing machine and IV,” Woodside wrote after returning from his visit to the hospital.

Geoffrey Rushlau said he understood that the mess hall was a chronic concern for those using it because it could not be secured easily.

Christopher was conscious after the explosion, his brother said.

“He tried to help people, and then I think he actually walked out of the tent,” he said.

Rushlau said he wasn’t sure when the surgery would be performed, whether Christopher would be shipped home after recovering from the surgery, or whether he would return to Iraq.

“I hope he can come home,” Rushlau said. “I hope they all can come home.”

Jason Hall, a police officer in Camden who is serving with the National Guard’s 133rd Engineer Battalion unit in Iraq, checked in by e-mail with his parents, Stephen and Ann Hall of Belfast, the day after the mess hall attack in Mosul.

“He’s been to that mess hall a couple of times,” Ann Hall said Thursday, but Jason was convinced it was not a safe setting. “It’s just a tent. It’s just not safe,” she remembers her son telling her when he was home for two weeks for Thanksgiving. “We talked about it on the way to Portland,” Hall said, when it came time to take her son to the airport.

“There are so many Iraqis all around on the base. He said, ‘You just don’t know who to trust,”‘ his mother said.

Jason was in a convoy at the time of the attack, “delivering a bulldozer to somewhere,” she said. Though Jason attended a military college and was prepared for service, he told his mother by e-mail that troops are in more jeopardy now than ever in Iraq.

Diana Gardiner of Stockton Springs, wife of Sgt. Wayne Gardiner of the 133rd Engineer Battalion, received an e-mail from her husband Tuesday night reporting he was “OK and loved us and missed us,” Gardiner wrote in an e-mail to the newspaper. He called home twice on Wednesday.

Bonnie Gray, Diana’s mother, is visiting her daughter and grandchildren Nicholas, 4, and Ashley, 2, for Christmas, from her home in Nantucket, Mass.

“That was a scary day,” she said Thursday of the hours after news of the Mosul attack, “a very scary day.”

A National Guard support group urged Diana Gardiner to turn off her TV while she awaited word of her husband, Gray said.

Wayne Gardiner told his wife he and a group were preparing to head out from the base on a vehicle convoy just before lunch on Tuesday. Some of his comrades invited him to join them for lunch, but he declined, saying, “I’m just going to chill out” away from the mess tent.

Wayne Gardiner knew Lynn Poulin, 47, of Freedom, who was killed in the attack, Gray said.

“He knew him very well. He was in the Belfast Armory for seven years [with Poulin],” she said.

Gardiner works at Ducktrap River Fish Farm in Belfast, doing building maintenance, Gray said.

The phone calls “reassured us for the moment,” Gray said, but the worries will continue.

Diana Gardiner expressed similar sentiments in her e-mail to the newspaper.

“But still my heart aches for the fallen and wounded and even though ours are returning early spring that leaves too much time for more heart-breaking events to take place,” Gardiner wrote.

Tracy Smith, family coordinator of Company A of the 133rd, e-mailed the newspaper to report hearing from her husband on Wednesday from Camp Marez.

“The soldiers are doing the best they can under the current situation,” she wrote. “Lynn Poulin was from Company A and a very good friend and mentor to the soldiers in this company.”

A funeral for Poulin and for Thomas Dostie, 20, of Somerville, who also was killed Tuesday in the bombing, will be held today in Mosul, Smith reported.

Matt Bixby of Belfast called his friend Mike Hurley, who is Belfast’s mayor, on Thursday, to report being OK.

Poulin and other members of the 133rd had “a special connection” with Maine credit unions, reported Jon Paradise, spokesman for the Maine Credit Union League.

Credit unions coordinated several fund-raisers for members of the 133rd, he said, including the donation of more than 30,000 minutes of phone cards. The credit union league also collected more than 1,000 items at its annual convention in May and sent them to the Guard unit.

During the summer, Poulin sent stuffed camels to credit union tellers and loan officers as a friendly gesture, Paradise reported, which spurred credit union employees and their families to collect 300 pounds of snacks, toiletries, games and supplies for those serving in the 133rd.

“Mr. Poulin told the credit union that the care packages created many smiles on sad faces,” Paradise said.

The credit union has set up a memorial fund for Poulin’s family. Checks can be made out and sent to: Lynn Poulin Memorial Fund, c/o Five County Credit Union, PO Box 598, 765 Washington St., Bath ME 04530.

Lisa Bussiere of Lewiston heard from her husband, Robert, by e-mail at 4:15 a.m. Wednesday. “I didn’t sleep much,” she said Thursday. Robert had left Mosul for another area two hours before the attack, she said.

Sharon Hill-Alley of Beals wrote the newspaper saying her nephew Shane Tatro of the 133rd sent two e-mails to family since the attack, reporting that he is well. Jamie Alley, Hill-Alley’s son, who is in Iraq at Camp Bucca, spoke with his mother Monday.

Sgt. Balkaran “Sammy” Samaroo, an Orono resident and University of Maine employee serving with the 133rd in Mosul, e-mailed friends Thursday to let them know he is safe.

A combat life saver, which is similar to an emergency medical technician, Samaroo had just left the tent when the explosion occurred. He returned to give aid to the injured.

“What I saw on the floor in the mess hall that day was a horrible scene. It will be in my memory for quite some time,” he wrote.

Gov. John Baldacci released Thursday the names of four Mainers who are among the injured. They are Maj. John Nelson of Lincoln, Sgt. John Ouellette of St. Francis, Capt. David Sivret of Calais and Sgt. Marc Haas of Brunswick. They are believed to have returned to duty, having suffered minor injuries.

– Compiled by NEWS reporter Tom Groening