Father gains sense of son's last moments in Iraq

Darrell Griffin Sr. has gotten down to work on his final collaboration with his son and namesake.

The book taking shape is a compendium. It will blend an account of a father's melancholy journey to Iraq with the dire experiences and searching meditations of a son, the latter written down by Darrell Griffin Jr. before a Sadr City sniper's bullet pierced the back of his head in March.

Darrell Jr. was a Fort Lewis-based Army infantry staff sergeant, 6 feet 2 inches of muscled warrior. Married, with no children, he had been an emergency medical technician in Compton, Calif., before finding his life's work as a soldier.

Although he had eschewed college, he was an avid reader.

Known in the family as Skip, he was strong-willed from an early age.

"He was always stretching the limits of authority, always testing the environment," his father said. "I didn't win an argument with him after he was about 8 years old."

Darrell Jr.'s death at age 36 left his father grieving and feeling helpless. Darrell Sr., a small-business consultant in Los Angeles, had suggested that his son keep a journal in Iraq, and had promised to help him put it in book form when he returned from his second combat tour.

"I thought it would be a great thing for a father and son to do, and at the same time it might help him keep his sanity while he was going through all that over there," Griffin said.

So, hoping to somehow soften his anguish, Griffin resolved to go to Iraq to gain a sense of the final phase of his son's life, to speak with the men he died fighting alongside and "to feel a little of the danger."

Fulfilling promise

He reasoned that it would help him write the book, which would be the fulfillment of a promise, a kind of gift to his son.

Griffin obtained permission from the military to travel to the war zone as an embedded journalist. His cause was helped by the fact that three weeks after his son's death, Darrell Jr. had been the subject of a long cover story in U.S. News & World Report. His name was familiar to senior officers, including Gen. David Petraeus, the senior U.S. commander in Iraq.

Apprised of Darrell Griffin Sr.'s visit, some of his son's former comrades in Charger Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, felt a certain unease.

"There was a small bit of hesitancy on the front end when Mr. Griffin and I first corresponded," said Capt. Steve Phillips, Darrell Jr.'s company commander and the last person to lay a comforting hand on him before he died. "Obviously, you never know the initial reaction someone would have when he first shows up and meets the people his son spent the last moments of his life with."

Griffin set out for Iraq, via Kuwait, on Sept. 1.

For three days and four nights, he tasted the Army life his son relished. He ate in the mess hall. He shopped at the PX. He used the long-distance telephones on which his son had called home.

He also interviewed the men in Darrell Jr.'s company, with a particular interest in details of his son's last day.

"I did have a little anxiety about meeting him," said 1st Lt. Gregory Weber, Darrell Jr.'s platoon leader.

He had been in the Stryker combat vehicle and heard the sniper's bullet strike Darrell Jr., standing exposed in the armored truck's open rear hatch.

"Losing a squad leader and a fellow soldier — it's a little hard to confront that man's father," Weber said.

As soon as he met Griffin, however, Weber's anxiety evaporated.

"I felt it was wonderful that Sgt. Griffin's father was honoring him and completing something his son was unable to, and I would have the hope my father would do the same thing, which I believe he would."

Griffin had hoped to accompany troops on a combat operation and perhaps visit the site where Darrell Jr. was shot. His son's unit, however, was standing down in anticipation of departing Iraq. Another unit had taken over operations.

Griffin could have gone on a mission with the new unit, but Phillips advised against it.

Since Griffin returned home, life has been knitting its way around the loss of his son.

Film rights to his son's story have been sold. A documentary, including videotaped interviews Griffin conducted in Iraq, also is in the works. (In accordance with the wishes of Darrell Jr.'s widow, Diana, Griffin said, he has taken care that the films not be used to oppose or support the war.)

Griffin recently traveled to Fort Lewis, where he attended the ceremony marking the homecoming of his son's unit, and conducted more interviews.

Meanwhile, Alex Kingsbury, the writer of the U.S. News & World Report profile, is helping Griffin find a publisher for the nascent book, for which Petraeus has agreed to write a foreword, Griffin said.

Darrell Jr.'s posthumous contributions to the book consist of graphic depictions of battle carnage, civilian casualties and instances in which he killed others. They also include such soul-searchings as these:

"This world with its complexity is only an imperfect analogy of the eternal abyss from which it comes. ... Is there truly a telos (an ultimate reason) to history or are we merely spinning out of control in an ambivalent universe? ... I am trying to make sense of a world that I had never known until the first time that I had to kill a man. ... "

Father-son dialogue

Such metaphysical wonderings characterized the father-son dialogue through the years, Griffin said.

"Neither of us liked sports, so the thing we shared was reading and talking," he said. "We'd get a couple of bottles of merlot and talk philosophy late into the night. I used to ask him in advance which philosophers we were going to discuss so I could read up. I don't think you'll find a father and son closer than we were. He was the smartest man I ever met. I'm not writing this book, we're writing it."