On June 13, 2004, four Humvees of Oregon National Guard soldiers drove into an organized and violent ambush just north of Taji, Iraq.
Insurgents detonated a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device that instantly killed Spc. Eric Scott McKinley and critically injured two others. Then the enemy combatants opened up with machine guns and exploded a secondary device that injured more Oregon soldiers.
That’s the version the news put out, and it’s terrible for sure, but today, 20 years later, I would like people to see more than just an epitaph or a footnote in history. It’s tragic that the Oregon National Guard lost a soldier, but the true tragedy is that our community, and country, lost a caring, curious, loyal and amazing human being.
I first met Eric in 2001 when I joined Bravo Company, 2/162, as his squad leader. He wasn’t a really good soldier when I met him, and that’s not just my opinion. That was his. If you asked him what he was, he’d tell you he was a baker. He worked at Alpine Bakery right there on the riverfront in Corvallis. He was a skater kid who loved good coffee, and he loved his girlfriend, Coventry, and their dogs.
He loved music. He’d always ask me to listen to these Celtic rock bands or Death Cab for Cutie or Tom Waits, or some other obscure genre and band. He was the only guy in our squad who called me by my first name instead of Sgt. Davis. I can’t explain why I let him. He always had this attitude about military culture that was like, “Come on, you’re not buying into this, right?”
As his squad leader, sometimes during drill I’d have to call him and tell him to get his butt to the armory because he ran late most of the time. It wasn’t that he didn’t have a sense of discipline. It’s just that he was very intelligent and liked to ask questions about what we were doing and more importantly, why we were doing it. In my experience, that curiosity makes the best soldiers. Still, he wasn’t a great shot, didn’t really prioritize physical training and would break pretty much all of the regulations when it came to hair color, piercings and tattoos. Eric was a citizen who answered the call, not a soldier who prepared to go to war, at least not at first.
The day our battalion commander told us we were headed to war, all of that changed. Eric finally took it seriously, and the week before we flew into a combat zone, our squad won the “squad of the battalion” award. I remember seeing the pride in his face as the lieutenant colonel pinned the Army Achievement Medal to his chest in front of the whole battalion. But I knew that the pride had nothing to do with winning an Army medal.
No, he was proud to be recognized by his peers in front of men and women he felt were family. He won their respect and for a tattooed, skater punk to win over 300-plus other soldiers that I guarantee took military training a lot more seriously than he did, that was quite a feat.
Eric’s death was a tragedy on so many levels. His six-year enlistment ended in April 2004, so he shouldn’t have even been in the theater of war. He should have been home with Coventry and their dogs, baking on the Willamette River, but even if he were given a choice, Eric wouldn’t have left his squad.
That morning, he shouldn’t have been on patrol. The first sergeant needed someone to supervise a detail on base. I told him he needed to go do that, but last minute he jumped in the back of our truck because he didn’t want his squad to patrol without him.
President Eisenhower said in his famous Cross of Iron speech, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies — in the final sense — a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”
I’d add that we are spending a very finite and special resource. This tragedy and those like it across our great country has robbed us of a generation of extraordinary people. Selfless, loyal and curious people who would have gone on to do amazing things.
I struggled with his death for years and years, but today I believe that as horrible as this tragedy is, we can use it to become better. We do that by celebrating days like June 13 and use Eric’s sacrifice to become better people ourselves. We need to earn it.
Remember Eric and others like him who put their entire lives on the line, went to war and didn’t return. Be twice the caring, curious and loyal person who helps their community in order to honor their deaths.
(Sean Davis served with Eric McKinley in the Oregon National Guard and was with him when the ambush in Iraq occurred on June 13, 2004. He is author of “The Wax Bullet War” and a Purple Heart recipient. He lives in Astoria).