Chapter 7 - The Investigation
The investigation lasted four months.
It was led by the Army's Criminal Investigation Command. It was overseen by the Army's inspector general. It was coordinated with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice. It was a very large investigation. It was the largest range safety investigation in the history of the United States Army.
It uncovered the following.
Major Thomas Hargrove had been the executive officer of the 3rd Battalion at Fort Sill for eleven months. In that time, he had, on at least fourteen separate occasions, allowed unauthorized civilians to use the north access road to reach a hunting lease adjacent to the range. He had accepted approximately forty-two thousand dollars in cash in exchange for these authorizations. He had kept the money in a bank account in his wife's name.
He had never notified the range control office. He had never notified the range safety NCO. He had never told anyone in his chain of command.
On three of the fourteen occasions, the civilians had been inside the impact zone during a live-fire exercise. On none of those three occasions had anyone been hurt.
On the fourth occasion — the morning of the incident — there had been two civilian hunters in two pickup trucks at grid 7-4-2, four civilian hunters walking at grid 7-4-0, and two Army soldiers from the range support detachment at grid 7-4-3.
The next volley would have been a six-round battery of 155-millimeter high-explosive rounds impacting at grid 7-4-1.
The dispersion pattern would have put two rounds within twenty meters of the soldiers at grid 7-4-3.
The soldiers at grid 7-4-3 would have been killed.
The two civilian hunters at grid 7-4-2 would have been killed.
The four civilian hunters at grid 7-4-0 would have been killed.
Eleven people — no, wait, ten. Two soldiers, two drivers, six hunters. Ten people. Or, if the M777 crew at the guns was counted — the crews were at two hundred meters from grid 7-4-1, which was outside the dispersion pattern, but if a round had misfired or fallen short — then it could have been more.
The final report of the investigation said, in careful language, that "the potential loss of life on the morning of the incident was, at minimum, ten personnel. The actual loss of life was zero. The difference was Staff Sergeant Brooke Carter."
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Colonel Evan Ross was not charged with a crime.
The investigation determined that he had known about Hargrove's arrangement with the civilian hunters. It determined that he had known that the arrangement was a violation of range safety regulations. It determined that he had, on at least two occasions, personally benefited from the arrangement — once through a payment of ten thousand dollars from Hargrove that had been used to purchase a boat, and once through a payment of fifteen thousand dollars that had been used to purchase a time-share in Florida.
But the investigation also determined that Ross had not personally ordered Hargrove to allow the civilians into the impact zone on the morning of the incident. It determined that Hargrove had acted alone. It determined that Ross had been negligent in his oversight of Hargrove but that his negligence did not rise to the level of a criminal offense.
Ross was, however, relieved of his command.
He was reassigned to a staff position at the Army's Training and Doctrine Command at Fort Eustis, Virginia. He was counseled in writing by the commanding general of Fort Sill. He was formally reprimanded by the Army's inspector general. He was placed on administrative leave pending a board of inquiry.
The board of inquiry was held in the spring of the following year.
It found that Ross had "failed to exercise the oversight and judgment required of a battalion commander," that he had "created an environment in which a senior officer felt empowered to violate range safety regulations for personal gain," and that he had "demonstrated a fundamental lack of understanding of the importance of range safety that is incompatible with command."
Ross was retired from the Army at the rank of lieutenant colonel.
He had been in the Army for thirty-two years.
He retired with a pension, but he was reduced in rank from colonel to lieutenant colonel, which meant that his retirement pay was reduced by approximately twenty-two percent. He moved to Florida. He is fifty-nine years old now. He does not give interviews. He does not speak to reporters. He does not attend veteran events. He lives in a small house with his wife and a garden, and he has, according to the only article that has ever been written about him since his retirement, "declined to comment."
He has never apologized publicly.
He has never apologized privately.
He has never spoken to Brooke Carter since the morning of the incident.
Brooke has never expected him to. She has never wanted him to. She has told her friends that the apology she got on the range that morning was enough. She has told her friends that the apology she got was the apology of a man who had just discovered that everything he believed about himself was wrong, and that it was a real apology, and that real apologies are the only ones that ever matter.
She does not know whether that is true.
She hopes it is.
She chooses to believe it is.
May you like
Because she is a soldier, and because she is a staff sergeant, and because she has learned that in the Army you do not need to be right about everything. You need to be right about the things that matter. And what mattered on the morning of the incident was not Colonel Evan Ross. What mattered was the ten people at grids 7-4-0, 7-4-2, and 7-4-3.
And those ten people are alive.
