1st Lt. Seth Dvorin’s family is upset with the war in Iraq, and the vague and contradicting answers they received from the military about his death.
By: Sharlee Joy DiMenichi and John Tredrea
1st Lt. Seth Dvorin had seen the same rotten tire on the same road over and over again while on regular missions searching for explosives near Iskandariyah, Iraq.
But on one mission, something about the familiar piece of debris seemed suspicious, said Richard Dvorin, Lt. Dvorin’s father.
"When they discovered the explosive device and confirmed what it was, he pushed his driver out of the way and shielded him with himself," Mr. Dvorin said.
Lt. Dvorin, then a 2nd Lieutenant, died instantly when the remote controlled bomb was detonated, Mr. Dvorin said Wednesday in his East Brunswick home. Everything Mr. Dvorin knows about his son’s death and his activities that day he learned this week from Army officials and soldiers fighting alongside his son.
Mr. Dvorin said his 24-year-old son, a 1998 South Brunswick High School graduate who led a platoon of 18 men, was responsible for identifying possible makeshift bombs and calling an explosives expert to disarm them. Mr. Dvorin said he was told his son warned his fellow soldiers to clear the area until the soldier responsible for defusing the bomb could come. But, he said the device exploded too quickly.
"He protected his men and that’s why my son is not here today," Mr. Dvorin said.
The Department of Defense announced Feb. 4 that Lt. Dvorin, "who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom," died Feb. 3 in Iskandariyah, Iraq, "when an improvised explosive device (IED) exploded while he was conducting counter-IED operations along a supply route."
"An improvised explosive device (IED) exploded while he was running a counter-IED operation," said Major Dan Bohr, a spokesman for the 10th Mountain Division.
Lt. Dvorin was assigned to the 10th Mountain Division, Battery B, 3rd Battalion, 62nd Air Defense Artillery Regiment, based at Fort Drum, N.Y.
"He died a hero he saved his men’s lives but he died in vain," Lt. Dvorin’s mother Sue Niederer said in her Hopewell Township home on Lake Baldwin Drive Friday.
Ms. Niederer blames President George W. Bush personally for her son’s death.
"Seth died for President Bush’s personal vendetta," she said. "Bush put us where we should never have been. We’re not even in a declared war."
Ms. Niederer says the growing national controversy over the failure to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq proves that "we have a very big problem in this country. If the intelligence on which this war was based is as inefficient as it now appears to have been, there is something is seriously wrong here."
Ms. Niederer and other members of Lt. Dvorin’s family also are upset that he may have been trying to defuse an unexploded bomb when he was killed. He had no training in defusing bombs, they said.
"We’re getting mixed stories from the Army, to say the least," Ms. Niederer said. "You won’t get anything from them. They’ll just tell you it’s all under investigation. One officer I spoke to told me Seth was handling the bomb, attempting to deactivate it, when it went off, killing him. It took off a piece of his skull. Another officer told me that there is no way, absolutely no way, he was touching the bomb."
Ms. Niederer said her son talked about going into the Army right after high school, but his family told him he had to go to college first. She said her son dreamed of a career in the FBI or CIA and was persuaded by an Army recruiter that he would have a better chance of reaching that goal if he were a military veteran.
"He also was promised that he would never go to combat," she said. "If he was in a war area, they told him, he would not be up front. My reaction to his going to Iraq was negative, to say the least. Seth’s superior officer at Watertown also was against it. He told his superiors that Seth was still too wet behind the ears for that. He begged them not to send Seth. But they told him he was needed over there, and he went."
Photos of Lt. Dvorin taken shortly before he graduated from air defense artillery school in El Paso, show a beaming young man in a deep green uniform with matching hat. Mr. Dvorin said that when the students graduate, they trade their hats for black berets.
"That was Seth’s biggest moment of glory when he got rid of that crummy hat and started wearing that beret," Mr. Dvorin said.
Ms. Niederer is outraged that her son was put in the position of dealing with the bomb in the first place.
"His training was in air defense artillery," she said. "He had no training in defusing bombs. Why wasn’t an expert handling this? What’s particularly amazing to me is that this was a mission to defuse bombs and there apparently was no expert in that area in the lead vehicle. Since there wasn’t, why weren’t they rerouted around that bomb? I want answers. I’m not going to just be quiet. If I speak up, maybe someone else’s son won’t die for nothing the way my son did. If I don’t speak up, then he will really died completely in vain." Army officials declined to comment on Lt. Dvorin’s role in the counter-explosives operation.
Mr. Dvorin said he initially supported the war in Iraq, but that his opinion changed as he grew to doubt that the country had weapons of mass destruction.
"In the beginning when president Bush went on television and said we have to get rid of these weapons of mass destruction, we had to get rid of this Axis of Evil, I believed him," Mr. Dvorin said.
Mr. Dvorin said his son’s death added to his opposition to the war. "I think the biggest tribute George Bush can pay to our soldiers who are still there and to all the troops that are killed, crippled and maimed is to bring home all the troops," Mr. Dvorin said.
Lt. Dvorin was posthumously awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star for his sacrifice in protecting his men. The awards follow a list of accomplishments including graduating from Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Ga., and Airborne and Air Defense Artillery Schools. Lt. Dvorin received a bachelor’s degree in criminology from Rutgers University (Livingston College) in 2002 and enlisted in the Army right after graduating from college.
Lt. Dvorin remained humble in spite of his many achievements, said Mr. Dvorin, who called his son Sonny-boy.
Shortly after learning he would be shipped to Iraq, Lt. Dvorin called from his Watertown, N.Y., home near the base to ask his father’s blessing on his desire to marry his college sweetheart, Kelly Harris.
"Here was a young man, 23 years old, going off to a war in Iraq and he was still asking his dad for permission to get married," Mr. Dvorin said.
Lt. Dvorin was married less than six months. He and his wife, Kelly Harris Dvorin, were married on the steps of the public library in Watertown on Aug. 26. He left for Iraq five days later.
"Kelly is a widow at age 25," Ms. Niederer said.
Mr. Dvorin said he recalled meeting Ms. Harris for the first time and taking her and his son to breakfast. He said he was impressed with Ms. Harris’s sweetness and the independence she showed by offering to pay for her meal. The affection the couple had for each other was obvious, Mr. Dvorin said.
"I could see at that point that I was eventually going to have a daughter-in-law and I knew who my daughter-in-law was going to be," Mr. Dvorin said.
A wedding snapshot shows Ms. Dvorin handing a rose from her bouquet to a little girl who happened to be playing on the steps of the library the day the couple married.
Lt. Dvorin’s sister, Rebekah Dvorin, said she was so happy to see her brother get married that she bought the couple’s wedding rings as a present.
"My brother was my rock, my foundation and what I lived for," Ms. Dvorin said.
Through tears, Mr. Dvorin told how he gave Lt. Dvorin a precious present of a different kind. Since the death of his beloved German shepherd, Hannah, five years ago, Mr. Dvorin had saved the dog’s ashes and planned to take them to his grave.
"I wanted that dog to be buried with me because… You’re not supposed to bury your children, they’re supposed to bury you. As much as I loved that dog, Hannah’s buried with him now," Mr. Dvorin said.
Mr. Dvorin said he saw the ashes as a way to send with his son the qualities Hannah embodied
"He needs the protection and guidance now," Mr. Dvorin said.