By Johnna Pinholster
VALDOSTA — Cpl. Pruitt Allen Rainey died protecting his fellow soldiers.
In the year and half since his death on July 13, 2008, his father, Frankie Gay, and the parents of some of the eight other soldiers killed that day in Wanat, Afghanistan, have taken up a different battle — one bent on finding answers.
The battle, which resulted in the deaths of nine soldiers and wounded 27 more, has been dubbed one of the bloodiest since the United States military arrived in the country.
The hours-long battle is also the center of an investigation by Central Command completed a little more than two weeks ago on Jan. 21. This is the second investigation conducted concerning the battle and the decisions made by commanding officers in the days leading up to the attack and on July 13, 2008.
Gay recalled feeling uneasy about his 22-year-old son’s last mission long before he received news of his death. His son’s emails and phone calls had, he said, become somber and fraught with musings on mortality.
In the fall of 2009, Gen. David Petraeus, head of Central Command, appointed Lt. Gen. Richard Natonski, commander of U.S. Marine Corps Forces Command, to head up a second investigation.
That investigation is finally complete, Gay said, but answers could still be months away.
“As a parent, we are not patient anymore,” Gay said. “We’ve been patient; we have been very patient.”
He was recently informed that he and the other parents will be given a copy of the 4,000-page investigation, but he is not yet sure when it will be received.
Central Command and Congress have 90 days to review the document and consider a course of action, Gay said.
In a Feb. 3 article for The Washington Post, journalist Greg Jaffe said the investigation recommends that the Army consider taking disciplinary action against three U.S. commanders who oversaw the 2008 mission.
According to Jaffe, the report has been sent to Gen. Charles Campbell, head of U.S. Army Forces Command, to determine if disciplinary action should be taken.
The report will be publicly released after Campbell has made his decision concerning disciplinary action and the families of the deceased soldiers have been briefed on its contents, Jaffe noted.
Though Central Command ordered the second investigation into the activities surrounding Wanat, Gay remains skeptical of the outcome.
“Even though he (Campbell) is recommended by this report, by Petraeus, to take disciplinary action, he doesn’t necessarily have to,” Gay said. “Had this been handled in the right way from the beginning, you probably would’ve heard no complaints from us. We want them to learn from their mistakes and move forward.”
According to Jaffe, the report suggests that disciplinary measures be considered against Capt. Matthew Myer, the company commander, and Lt. Col. William Ostlund, the battalion commander.
Myer was awarded the Silver Star for his valor in calling in air strikes during the attack. Ostlund oversaw the operation, Jaffe reported.
Petraeus reviewed the investigators' findings and recommended that Col. Charles Preysler, the brigade commander who oversaw the operation, also be considered for disciplinary action, Jaffe noted.
Under Army doctrine, he would have been responsible for some of the shortcomings, Jaffe noted.
In the article, Jaffe reported that he obtained this information from military officials who spoke under the condition of anonymity because the investigation has not been released.
As part of Central Command’s investigation, Gay and other parents were also interviewed.
Gay said he spent three days in late October of 2009 in Norfolk, Va., testifying under oath and providing the investigators with emails sent to and received from his son.
Though only four parents of the nine killed have remained active in the pursuit of answers, Gay said he has become especially close to retired Army Col. David Brostrom.
Brostrom’s son, 1st Lt. Jonathan Brostrom, and Rainey were very close, Gay said.
“They got killed together,” Gay said. “Pruitt’s the one that stood up and exposed himself with no gun, no ammunition to save Jonathan. Come to find out through more investigation, he (Rainey) got shot in the back.”
In addition to the parents, the investigators have met with the soldiers who survived the battle, he said.
Gay said he doesn’t believe those in command have lied about the events leading up to the battle and the events surrounding the battle itself, but he does believe that all the facts have yet to be laid out on the table.
“I can’t use the word lie. I think that’s a little strong,” Gay said. “I think they have not been forthcoming with all the information. From the day I talked to Cmdr. Bill Ostlund, the reports were not very forthcoming.”
Gay said he has not talked with Ostlund since the second investigation’s completion but plans to hold the commander to his promise to meet with the parents and answer their questions about Wanat.
At the end of all this, Gay said he still wants the one thing he has always wanted since his pursuit of a second investigation began.
“I would really like an apology from these commanders, for them to ‘man up.’ That’s all I want,” Gay said. “That goes a long way with me.”
In materials obtained last fall by The Valdosta Daily Times, Douglas Cubbison of the U.S. Army Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., documents the actions leading up to the battle and the battle itself that was fought by the members of C Company, 173rd Airborne, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry, based out of Italy.
C Company or “Chosen Company” 2nd Platoon was ordered to relocate to Wanat with just two weeks left in its 15-month deployment.
In the months leading up to the move to the new outpost, Chosen Company was involved in more than 1,100 firefights, Gay said.
In the days leading up to the attack, work on the outpost was delayed as construction workers refused to travel to the site, citing security concerns and water and food rations running low, Cubbison wrote.
Chosen Company also received various reports from locals that an attack was imminent.
The battle of Wanat began in the pre-dawn hours of July 13, 2008, when rocket-propelled grenades rendered the unit’s mortars ineffective and some 200 insurgents descended on the outpost. The observation post was assaulted the hardest, and in just 15 minutes, all nine soldiers on the post were either killed or injured.
By the time air support arrived several hours later, nine soldiers were dead.
In Cubbison’s report, he concluded that no senior commander ever visited Wanat before establishing it as an outpost and it was “highly questionable” whether these commanders exercised due diligence when they ordered a platoon to move there. He writes that the Combined Joint Task Force, which heads operations in Afghanistan, did not place adequate emphasis upon the planning, implementation and sustainment of the move to Wanat.
He also states that the lack of heavy equipment to fortify defenses and the lack of intelligence support directly contributed to the casualties suffered on July 13.
Chosen Company 2nd Platoon was also deployed to Wanat without any civil affairs capacity, medics, Afghan funds or humanitarian supplies, according to Cubbison.
Gay said he has heard that Central Command has asked Cubbison to revise his document, which was developed separately from its own investigations, to include more information.
National news outlets have periodically covered the Battle of Wanat, and in a Dateline special, Gay said he viewed the most bone-chilling footage of the days leading up to his son’s death yet.
The footage was taken by Taliban members in the days leading up to the attack in Wanat and even shows the insurgents entering the encampment after the battle to collect food, medicine and soldiers' supplies after the military pulled out, Gay said.
“They are on the top of the hill looking down on our boys, saying prayers and talking about what they are going to do,” Gay said. “You can see Pruitt and all of them down there. That’s a hard thing to watch.”
The clear skies in the video raise even more questions for Gay, who has heard conflicting reports regarding the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to monitor in the areas around Wanat in the hours leading up to the attack.
“They videotaped all the way up to Saturday night when the first shots were fired,” Gay said.
In his conversation with Ostlund, the commander told Gay the UAVs were not used because they were needed in another area.
In the first investigation conducted by the military, the reason given for the UAVs not conducting surveillance around Wanat was bad weather.
Even though the pain of Rainey’s death has not diminished as the fight for answers continues, Gay said he has no animosity toward anyone in the military.
“The whole reason we pushed for this investigation is because, as parents, you know when something is wrong,” he said.
The platoons operating in the Kunar Province, an area of rugged terrain, often become sitting ducks, when surrounded by mountains and a people accustomed to the terrain, he said.
“If you are going to close a bad area and move to another eight miles away, I think you ought to take some precautions and do some planning,” Gay said. “The whole reason we are doing this is to keep it from happening again.”
But it has happened again. In October of 2009, 15 miles away from Wanat, eight more soldiers were killed and another 25 wounded in a battle.
“How many times does it take before the Army learns their lesson?” he said. “The Army has to take responsibility, and that’s all I want them to do so these kids don’t die in vain.”
The search for answers into his son’s death has not brought Gay peace or closure, he said.
“I really thought I would feel better, but now I’m just mad. I’m just pissed off now because, from the beginning, we knew something was wrong,” Gay said. “The whole time you are requesting an investigation and sending off letters, and the whole time you are getting these answers back in writing that just does not make any sense. Where is the common sense factor? Don’t patronize me. Tell me. I can handle it.”
To view videos from various media outlets about the battle of Wanat or to learn more about Cpl. Pruitt Allen Rainey and the battle of Wanat, visit the Facebook page “Playing for Pruitt.”
