For families of two slain soldiers, at last, closure
For months, the banner bearing a photograph of Army Sergeant Alex Jimenez and Private Byron W. Fouty dressed in their battle fatigues was a beacon of hope. "Together they serve our nation, together they come home," it said.
Strung on a fence outside Jimenez's father's Lawrence apartment yesterday, it took on a new meaning. After 14 months missing, the men were on their way home, but not in the way their loved ones had hoped.
Instead, a weathered POW-MIA flag tacked on the front of Ramon "Andy" Jimenez's Albion Street home was replaced with a bright American flag, and friends and family bearing food and flowers passed by a makeshift memorial as they arrived to express their condolences.
"One of the reasons I wanted him to come home for was to tell each one of you from his perspective who he was," Andy Jimenez said through a translator as he sat bleary eyed under a shade tree in his back yard. Nearby, several relatives and family friends huddled, consoling one another in Spanish, and a table sat in a corner of the yard crowded with Dominican food.
The soldiers' remains were found Tuesday at a site several kilometers west of Jurf as-Sakhr, military officials said in a statement.
The two men, who were part of the 10th Mountain Division based at Fort Drum, N.Y., were part of a patrol looking for insurgents planting roadside bombs in May 2007 when they were hit by automatic weapons fire and explosives on a deserted highway south of Baghdad. Four men and an Iraqi translator were killed in the attack and the body of a fifth was found later. Jimenez and Fouty were abducted, and a month later military officials announced that US troops had discovered the pair's identification cards in an empty house about 75 miles north of the site of the ambush.
This year, on Memorial Day, Jimenez's parents met privately with President Bush in Washington and urged him to do whatever he could to help find their son. Yesterday, Andy Jimenez began tearing up as he recalled the encounter on a day when Americans pay tribute to fallen soldiers.
"Perhaps that same day, our son was also a fallen soldier," he said.
Jimenez, 25, and Fouty, 19, of Waterford, Mich., remained classified as "missing-captured" until yesterday.
Military officials said yesterday that special operations forces captured a person on July 1 suspected of knowing where the two men were buried. That person's information led investigators to the site where the remains were found.
"It's been a long 14 months," Francisco Urena, Lawrence's director of Veterans Services, said outside Jimenez's home yesterday. "It's caught us all by surprise although we all prepared for the worst."
Jim Wareing, director of New England Caring for Our Military, said he will put up a new banner today to recognize Jimenez.
In the past 14 months, Wareing has helped put up dozens of banners across the state welcoming troops home and paying tribute to those injured or killed in action. He's also become close with Andy Jimenez, visiting him about twice a week every week for the past year.
"It's upsetting," Wareing said. "Alex was an absolute hero, both him and Bryon."
The military said yesterday it was performing autopsies on the men. Urena said that Jimenez's family is tentatively planning to send his remains to Lawrence for a service before burying him at a cemetery in New York, where his mother lives.
Urena said that Andy Jimenez had held out hope for 14 months that his son was still alive.
"He had hope until yesterday, until 5 o'clock when we received the news," he said. "It was upsetting to hear, but at the same time, it gives the family closure."
As reporters gathered in Andy Jimenez's backyard yesterday, he read a letter that his son wrote to an Army recruiter eight years ago when he sought to enlist.
"I believe that in the United States Army, I may reach my goals which are . . . making positive differences, bringing peace to the innocent, giving the uninnocent what they deserve, and making justice my duty as a US soldier," the letter says.
Clutching the letter, Andy Jimenez spoke of his disappointment that the Army had kept his son past his one-year deployment, announcing during Alex's 10th month in Iraq that he would instead serve 15 months.
"If there was no war, that would be great, but since there is a conflict, it would be great to bring them back when they are supposed to come back," he said.
"I don't know much about politics, but this bothers me a lot," he added.
Brian Bender of the Globe Staff reported from Washington. Tania deLuzuriaga can be reached at deluzuriaga@globe.com. 