Almost every night, Betsy Coffin of Kennebunk, Maine, thinks about that day her husband died on a Baghdad highway in summer 2003.

Army 1st Sgt. Christopher Coffin was riding in a truck that swerved to avoid two Iraqi vehicles. The truck plunged into a deep pit, where a dying Coffin was swarmed by Iraqis who stole his wedding ring. For the widow, more than two years later, the questions aren't settled.

Was it an accident turned ugly, as the Army initially found — and the Department of Defense Inspector General concluded earlier this year in another review? Or was the truck forced off the road by insurgents, as asserted by the truck's driver and three Pacific Northwest soldiers who rushed to the crash site?

"It was flabbergasting to me that they just can't accept what I say," retired Spc. Dan Wight, the truck's driver, said in a recent interview.

In a war that has killed more than 1,900 U.S. soldiers, nearly 1,600 in action, the difference between an accidental death and a combat death might seem insignificant. But the difference consumes Betsy Coffin, because a combat death would mean her husband's sacrifice and the efforts of soldiers who risked their lives to try to save him have never been properly recognized.

The Seattle Times first chronicled Betsy Coffin in April 2004 as she got in touch with Sgt. Dana Kohfeld, a Portland-based Army reservist who gave first aid to the dying Christopher Coffin. Since then, Betsy Coffin has continued to search for answers, reaching out to soldiers who were there that day and pushing for additional Army reviews.

"It's hard to find peace when you don't know what really happened," Coffin said. "I know I may never get the truth, but I also know that if I am to live with myself, I must try everything that I can to try to find it."

As the Iraq war drags on, Betsy Coffin's quest is shared by a growing circle of families unsatisfied with official military accounts of the deaths of their own loved ones. Some hunger for more details to help them through their grief. Others are concerned the official accounts omit information that might cast the military in an unfavorable light.

Brian Hart of Bedford, Mass., for example, has tried for nearly two years to obtain official details about the October 2003 death of son Pfc. John Hart. A letter from a unit commander said John Hart — a gunner on a Humvee — was caught in an ambush and died after exhausting his ammunition. But Brian Hart has heard from other soldiers that his son was sent on patrol with only one-third of the standard ammunition issue for his machine gun.

"I just want to know what really happened," Hart said.

In a reversal that made national headlines, Army officials first told the family of former professional football player Pat Tillman that he had died in a firefight in Afghanistan in April 2004. The Army later admitted Tillman had been killed by gunfire from his fellow Rangers and not enemy forces.

Army officials said they do help families obtain accurate information, working with them to get autopsy reports and other details. But some investigative documents — due to security concerns — are not released.

"Everyone deals with these things differently," said Maj. Elizabeth Robbins, an Army public-affairs officer. "Typically, fewer than 50 percent of the families request actual autopsy documents and reports."

"Never got a thank-you"

Betsy Coffin, 43, said her search is an attempt to fulfill a promise she made to her husband in a troubling phone call two weeks before he died.

The Coffins had been together for 25 years, and Betsy's 51-year-old husband, a police officer and Army reservist, called home often during his three months in Iraq.

During that phone call in June 2003, Christopher Coffin was agitated. If anything should happen to him and Army explanations didn't make sense, he wanted his wife to find the truth even if she had to ask Maine's congressional delegation for help.

"It was really out of character for him to say something like that," Betsy Coffin recalled. "And he was really adamant and would not let it go."

A shaken Betsy Coffin didn't ask her husband why he was so worried. She now thinks he was concerned about convoy security.

First Sgt. Coffin was a stickler for preparations and keenly aware of insurgent attacks in Iraq. He believed convoys were too often poorly prepared and understaffed, said retired Spc. Wight, who often rode with Coffin in the 352nd Civil Affairs Command.

"We discussed a lot about convoy procedures, and he thought that anything less than three vehicles, you are just asking to invite trouble," Wight said, in his first public interview. He has spent two years recovering from a broken back and other injuries suffered in the crash that killed Coffin.

On July 1, 2003, the day of the crash, Coffin had unsuccessfully tried to muster a three-vehicle convoy from the short-staffed unit, Wight said. So Coffin and Wight did something they had never done before, Wight said. They ventured out in a two-vehicle convoy.

According to Army reports on the incident, the two-vehicle convoy met the minimum standard for convoys on that highway. But Kohfeld, the reservist from the Portland unit, said her unit required at least four vehicles to travel together.

Coffin rode with Wight. A Humvee with two other soldiers followed as the convoy moved south along a divided highway.

Wight told The Seattle Times that two Iraqi vehicles — a white truck and a Volkswagen bus — darted across the median directly in front of him. Wight said it appeared they were trying to hit his truck, or cut it off.

Wight said he swerved to the right, to the left and lost control. The truck landed upside-down in an 8-foot-deep construction pit in the median, the only such highway hole for miles around.

The two soldiers in the Humvee, identified in investigative reports only as Spc. Orzol and Spc. Williams, stopped to help. But, as Army investigators later concluded, the convoy was "woefully unprepared," lacking radios and an adequate first-aid kit.

The investigators also found the Iraqi crowd was increasingly unruly, putting the soldiers' lives at risk. The initial investigating officer, citing "extreme and hostile conditions," even recommended that the two soldiers — as well as Wight and Coffin — be awarded the Bronze Star, which honors service against an armed enemy, according to a report obtained by Betsy Coffin.

Reinforcements arrived from a nearby convoy organized by the 671st Engineer Company of Portland. They included Sgt. David Biehl of Spokane, 1st Sgt. Perry Burkholder of Tacoma and Sgt. Kohfeld, all of whom told Betsy Coffin that her husband appeared to have died in a trap sprung by insurgents.

Biehl, first on the scene, told The Seattle Times that about 10 Iraqis had climbed into the pit to steal gear from the wounded Wight and Coffin.

Biehl and Kohfeld also said they were subject to AK-47 fire. Then they were startled by explosions as the Humvee from Coffin's convoy burst into flames, setting off ammunition inside. "It was a hostile action," Biehl said. "We were taking fire from the tree line. ... But we never got a thank-you from their unit. Nothing."

"Official" word

Last fall, Kohfeld was called to Washington, D.C., to be interviewed by two Defense Department investigators who, at the prodding of Maine's congressional delegation, were again reviewing Coffin's death.

Kohfeld said she was surprised and angered by the interview. "It was like something out of the movies, they were just flat out trying to second-guess me," Kohfeld said. "They tried every which way to make me say it was an accident, and I said it absolutely was not. They were very aggressive — and very hostile."

The final Defense Department Inspector General's report acknowledged it was "relatively impossible" to determine the intent of the Iraqi drivers who veered toward the convoy because they were never questioned and there were no other witnesses to support Wight's account of the crash.

But in a letter to Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, that accompanied the report, Assistant Inspector General John Crane offered no such hedge. He declared that "witness testimony and later our own inquiry, established that Sgt. Coffin died as a result of a traffic accident, not hostile activity."

A spokesman for the Inspector General said the office stands by Crane's letter.

Betsy Coffin is left to choose between the official findings, and the statements of four soldiers who were there when her husband died.

She has chosen the soldiers' version. Still, she keeps looking for more answers. "There is nothing in the world that is more important to me than keeping this final promise to my husband," she said.

Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or hbernton@seattletimes.com