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by Erin E. Thompson, USAICoE Staff Historian
ASSISTANT S-2 KILLED IN PRE-DEPLOYMENT ATTACK
On 23 March 2003, a sergeant from the 101st Airborne Division murdered Brigade Assistant S-2 Capt. Christopher S. Seifert just days before the unit deployed for the invasion of Iraq. The loss of Captain Seifert deeply affected the unit’s stability and intelligence readiness in the early days of the war.
Born and raised in rural Pennsylvania, Christopher Scott Seifert joined the Army Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) at Lehigh University while attending nearby Moravian College, where he met and married Theresa “Teri” Flowers. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in history, he was commissioned as an infantry second lieutenant and eventually assigned to 1st Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment (Mechanized), 1st Armored Division, in Baumholder, Germany. Whilst stationed in Europe in the late 1990s, he participated in Operation JOINT GUARDIAN in Kosovo. At the end of his European deployment, he transitioned to the MI Branch and attended the MI Captains Career Course at Fort Huachuca, Arizona.
Captain Seifert was assigned to the 1st Brigade Combat Team (BCT), 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), as the brigade assistant S-2. In this role, Seifert was responsible for determining enemy positions, strengths, and weaknesses, and reporting on their weapons capabilities. He deployed to Camp Pennsylvania, Kuwait, with 1st BCT in early 2003 in preparation for the invasion of Iraq. In the leadup to the invasion, Seifert “spent long hours preparing maps and gathering intelligence” for the 101st Airborne. According to Bart Womack, then-command sergeant major (CSM) of the 1st BCT, Seifert “was like a sponge in terms of information. He wore the emotion of loving the Army on his sleeve. He always had a smile on his face.”
In the early morning of 23 March 2003, just days before the unit was scheduled to cross into Iraq, a combat engineer attached to Company A, 326th Engineer Battalion, tossed several grenades into the tactical operations center tents where the members of 1st BCT were sleeping. The assailant then began firing his M4 carbine at escaping soldiers, with one bullet fatally striking Captain Seifert in the back. A second victim, Maj. Gregory L. Stone, an air liaison officer with the Idaho Air National Guard, died two days later from wounds sustained in the attack. Fourteen others were injured, including CSM Womack. These were the first casualties of the Iraq War.
The death of two officers, at the hands of another soldier, right before the division deployed into active combat caused innumerable problems. Both men were well-liked, and Seifert had made an incredible impression on the intelligence staff. Brigade S-2 Maj. Kyle Warren described Seifert as the “tall center around whom the rest of the team revolved.” The two had formed a strong bond while developing the brigade’s intelligence section in the leadup to the invasion. The unit deployed three days later and was forced to rebuild itself in the war’s harrowing early days.
Major Stone is buried in Arlington National Cemetery and was survived by his fiancée, Tammie Eslinger, and two children, Alex and Joshua. He was forty years old. Captain Seifert is buried in his hometown in rural Pennsylvania and was survived by his wife and four-month-old son, Benjamin. He was twenty-seven years old. He is memorialized on the Military Intelligence Memorial Wall at the U.S. Army Intelligence Center of Excellence, Fort Huachuca. One year after his death, the Fort Huachuca School-Age Center was rechristened the Seifert School-Age Center in his honor.
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| Date Taken: | 03.19.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 03.19.2024 10:17 |
| Story ID: | 466517 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 592 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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