without remorse

Washington — Major Harry Schmidt, who killed four Canadian troops and wounded eight others in Afghanistan, acted shamefully and rashly and “used the inherent right of self-defence” as an excuse to wage his own personal war, a U.S. Air Force general ruled yesterday in finding the pilot guilty of dereliction of duty.

Multiple charges of manslaughter and aggravated assault against Major Schmidt had been dropped, but Lieutenant-General Bruce Carlson’s scathing judgment imposed the toughest punishment available under the administrative process. Major Schmidt will go on half pay for two months, which will cost him $5,672 (U.S.).

He is prohibited from flying Air Force aircraft, and his military record will show an official reprimand. He can continue to serve in the Illinois Air National Guard.

“Are our children worth only $5,000?” sobbed Agatha Dawkins, the mother of Corporal Ainsworth Dyer, one of the four Canadian soldiers killed when Major Schmidt’s laser-guided 250-kilogram bomb exploded near Kandahar on April 17, 2002. Sergeant Marc Léger, Private Richard Green and Private Nathan Smith also lost their lives.

Major Schmidt “still has his family; he still has his children; he is still walking as a free man,” she said in a telephone interview from Quebec, accusing Canadian and U.S. military authorities of being “sellouts.”

Other Canadian relatives said the result is just.

“This is the verdict I was looking for. It’s not going to bring the boys back, but it is going to give the families some closure,” Joyce Clooney, Pte. Green’s grandmother, said from Bridgewater, N.S. “Sending him to jail wouldn’t have done any good, but this may do some good. [Major Schmidt] didn’t obey orders, and according to what I’ve seen and heard all along, he didn’t seem to care: Even when he apologized, he wasn’t sincere.”

Gen. Carlson castigated Major Schmidt for failing to show remorse. Until last month, the pilot demanded to be court-martialled, insisting he’d done nothing wrong.

“I was astounded that you portrayed yourself as a victim of the disciplinary process without expressing heartfelt remorse over the deaths and injuries you caused to the members of the Canadian Forces,” Gen. Carlson wrote.

He was referring to the one-hour hearing on Canada Day when Major Schmidt presented his version of what happened.

“If you believed, as you stated, [that] you and your leader were threatened, you should have taken a series of evasive actions and remained at a safe distance to await further instructions. Instead, you closed on the target and blatantly disobeyed the direction to ‘Hold fire.’ Your failure to follow that order is inexcusable.”

Gen. Carlson also found that Major Schmidt lied.

“Following the engagement in question, you lied about the reasons why you engaged the target after you were directed to hold fire, and then you sought to blame others. You had the right to remain silent, but not the right to lie. In short, the final casualty of the engagement over Kandahar on 17 April 2002 was your integrity.”

The so-called friendly-fire incident produced outrage in Canada, but Major Schmidt enjoyed considerable support among combat pilots and others in the United States.

Many said they believed he was being treated more harshly than other pilots involved in similar incidents because Washington wanted to placate Ottawa, its ally in Afghanistan.

In Springfield, Ill., where Major Schmidt was based, John Russo said the punishment is by no means light.

“It was an accident of war,” said Mr. Russo, a Korean War veteran and commander of the town’s branch of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. “If it had been American troops [killed], it would have hardly been released to the public. It would have been swept under the rug.”

But Gen. Carlson rejected the version of events that blamed the system and its failure to warn Major Schmidt and Major William Umbach, his flight leader, that an allied live-fire exercise was under way.

Major Schmidt is guilty of “callous misbehaviour,” and his “willful misconduct directly caused the most egregious consequences imaginable, the deaths of four coalition soldiers and injury to eight others,” the general says in the official written reprimand.

Major Schmidt has declined to speak publicly about the incident, but his lawyer, Charles Gittins, said last month that “with the information he was given that night, he would do the same thing again.” He had decided never to fly again, not least if it meant “having a bunch of people sitting around in air-conditioned comfort passing judgment on guys in combat.”

The pilot apparently did not change those views in his appearance before Gen. Carlson. “In fact, you were obviously angry that the United States Air Force had dared to question your actions,” the general wrote.

Major Schmidt flew combat missions during the Kosovo war in 1999, and was considered such a gifted flyer that he was selected for the U.S. Navy’s elite Top Gun school.

“You were blessed with an aptitude for aviation; your nation provided you the best aviation training on the planet and you acquired combat expertise in previous armed conflicts,” Gen. Carlson wrote.

“However, by your gross poor judgment, you ignored your training and your duty to exercise flight discipline, and the result was tragic. I have no faith in your abilities to perform in a combat environment.”

In Edmonton yesterday, Sgt. Léger’s widow, Marley, said she felt relief.

“I’m feeling somewhat peaceful with the fact that the United States government has acknowledged that he’s guilty and that what he did was wrong,” she said, standing in front of a memorial tree she planted for her husband in a cemetery. The plaque under the tree is inscribed: “Life is not measured by its length, but by its depth.”

Ms. Léger, who keeps in touch with her husband’s military comrades, said no punishment would be enough.

But she was satisfied with the general’s strongly worded reprimand, which she said was “exactly what I would say, and covers a lot of how I felt and what I’ve said.”

In the early days after the bombing, Ms. Léger became the public face of the tragedy.

She said yesterday that she is happy the ordeal is almost over — Major Schmidt has until Monday to appeal the ruling — and she is close to being able to move on.

“It’s going to be tough, because I’ve lived this last 2½ years in Marc’s death and dealing with it and grieving publicly and knowing that I may have to go to trial and continue on with it. Now I have to let go and try and just be Marley.”

Asked what she would say to Major Schmidt if given the chance, Ms. Léger said: “Do you know what? I’ve thought about it. I don’t know what I would say to him. I don’t know that anything I could say would make him realize what he’s taken. Honestly, I don’t know that the words would even come if I had the opportunity.”