Reaction mixed to friendly fire report
MONTPELIER -- The companion of a Vermont National Guardsman killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan last year says his death was a tragedy that was the end result of a long series of mistakes by military commanders.
The American who pulled the trigger on the machine gun that killed Vermont National Guard Sergeant First Class John Thomas Stone and Canadian Private Robert Costall was only partly to blame, said Rose Loving of Tunbridge, who was briefed about the deaths in May.
"There's a lot of things that led to this incident," Loving said yesterday. "That fatigued soldier was the last one of the list of problems. To be fair to everyone, it is just a horrendous tragedy."
But Colleen McBain, of Thunder Bay, Ontario, and Costall's aunt, said she was disappointed no charges would be filed against the soldier who fired the shots.
"Apologies for the mistake, to my knowledge, haven't been issued from the US military to the family members," McBain told radio station CKPR. "We're just getting more and more disappointed, I suppose."
Stone and Costall were killed on March 29, 2006, during an early-morning attack on Forward Operating Base Robinson, an outpost in southern Afghanistan built along a Taliban infiltration route.
Stone, 52, of Tunbridge, an embedded tactical trainer, was hit by the machine-gun fire on a roof where he had gone to help defeat an attack by Taliban forces. Costall, 22, born in Thunder Bay, was part of a 38-man Canadian quick reaction force sent to the base to help repel the attack. Both men were hit by shots fired from within the Special Forces compound at the base.
The results of an Army investigation released this week determined the fatal shots were fired by a Special Forces soldier. An investigator said the deaths were regrettable but "understandable in the context of this firefight." He recommended no charges be filed.
But the report also outlined a series of problems with the leadership at the base, which had been set up about a month before Stone and Costall were killed.
There were serious supply problems, inadequate planning, and fatigue of the soldiers, who had been under near daily attack and working hard to build the base, the report said.
The report said the Canadians, who had been brought in after dark and were fighting from a berm outside the camp gate, never told the Special Forces soldiers where they were going to set up.
