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John Chapman among 7 killed in Afghanistan trying to rescue comrade

Wednesday, March 13, 2002

By Tom Gibb, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

WINDBER, Pa. -- He was born in Connecticut; he wasn't a hometown boy. Truth is, most of the 4,600 people around this northern Somerset County town didn't even know Air Force Tech. Sgt. John Chapman.

As Air Force Tech Sgt. John Chapman's casket is lowered into the ground in Windber, Somerset County, one of his team members is consoled; another stands at attention. Chapman was one of seven soldiers who died in the mountains of east Afghanistan when they returned by helicopter to rescue a team member who tumbled from a chopper as it was strafed by enemy fire. More photos from the service. (V.W.H. Campbell, Jr.)

But he married a local girl. He was among the first Americans to die in Afghanistan, killed in what military officials recounted as a vicious firefight. And yesterday, he was buried in a hillside cemetery looking down on this one-time coal town.

If that didn't make John Chapman a Windber boy, local resident Joe Datko figured, it made him the next-best thing.

"This is a small town," Datko said as he and neighbors watched a respectful 100 feet from where Chapman's family gathered under a funeral tent. "In a small town, you feel a closeness."

One day and 18 miles removed from the open field where Somerset County remembered United Flight 93 and the half-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist strike on the United States, mourners remembered this early casualty of the nation's strike back.

During a one-day viewing Monday, more than 1,000 people filed through the local William Kisiel Funeral Home. At the direction of the mayor and the borough council president, scores of homes hung out flags and lowered what flags they could to half-staff.

And yesterday, in the same twin-spired Catholic church where Valerie Novak married John Chapman nine years ago, she sat with her two young daughters, one sleeping on her shoulder, little more than arm's-length from her 36-year-old husband's poplar casket.

Four hundred people -- some family, 80 soldiers, most of the rest townspeople -- were there in St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church with her.

"It's important for you to know that John died a hero," Lt. Col. Kenneth Rodriguez, Chapman's commanding officer, told the congregation.

Nine days ago, in America's bloodiest day since the Afghan war began, seven soldiers died in the mountains of east Afghanistan when they returned by helicopter to try to rescue a team member who tumbled from a chopper as it was strafed by enemy fire.

Among them was Chapman, a 17-year veteran of the Air Force and member of the elite 24th Special Tactics Squadron, stationed at Pope Air Force Base in Fayetteville, N.C.

Chapman was a willing leader of the recovery, Rodriguez said.

	Valerie Chapman, second from right, leaves the church as her husband's casket is placed into a hearse after the funeral service. (V.W.H. Campbell Jr., Post-Gazette)

"He knew that the area they were going into was crawling with enemy and that the enemy was waiting for them to come back," Rodriguez said. " ... All he said was, 'Let's go,' and go they did, into the jaws of death."

Chapman died in a barrage of gunfire and probably spared more of his fellow soldiers in the process, Rodriguez said.

"I know if John hadn't engaged the first enemy position, they would've gotten us all," he said.

But the soldier portrayed as tough and ebullient was also an enthusiastic dad to his daughters, ages 3 and 5, eulogists reminded.

"I never can recall hearing John say he was afraid of anything," brother Kevin Chapman of Colorado Springs, Colo., said in his own eulogy.

"He would jump out of a plane in the middle of the night ... or he would play Barbies with his little girls."

"Tech. Sgt. Chapman was willing to endanger his life in the conflict between good and evil," Bishop Joseph Adamec of the Altoona-Johnstown Catholic Diocese wrote to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton parish priest Rev. Leonard E. Voytek.

A quarter-mile up the hill, in St. John Cantius Cemetery, Chapman was buried with military honors that included a missing-man formation flyover by Air Force A-10 Thunderbolts, appearing from the gray, western horizon.