ANCHORAGE, Alaska — In the end, after experiencing every father's nightmare, Roger Brown was offered a token of consolation by the military men who came to his aid.

A day after his 9-year-old son died when he drove a snowmobile into a 140-foot hole on an Alaska glacier, Brown guided an Army mountaineering team to the site. And when more than a ton of snow had been pulled away, and the body of the Shjon Brown had been dug out, soldiers from the Alaska Northern Warfare Training Center made room for Roger Brown near the lip of the deadly hole.

"The No. 1 man bringing the stuff up was one of our lead mountaineers, 1st Sgt. (Tom) Dow," said Maj. William Prayner, who directed the recovery. "We put the father right next to him, tied in. After we had packaged Shjon up, we brought him up, and his father, with the first sergeant, brought him out of the hole."

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The tragedy unfolded Saturday in the Hoodoo Mountains, the site of the Tesoro Arctic Man Classic, a race in which a skier descends a slope, grabs a towline trailing a snowmobile, gets pulled up an second hill, then descends to the finish line. The fastest skiers cross the finish line in about four minutes.

The race draws thousands of Alaskans who camp along the Richardson Highway and use snowmobiles to enjoy riding on the sunny, warm April days.

The Browns were among them, and with friends, made their way Saturday afternoon up the West Gulkana Glacier.

As Roger Brown took a break on a hillside, he watched his son drive around a mound. When Shjon did not reappear, Roger Brown traced the boy's tracks and discovered he had driven into a moulin, a hole formed when water on the glacier's surface melts ice and flows to an underground river below.

The hole in summer would have been about 30 feet in diameter, said Maj. Prayner, who heads the Alaska Northern Warfare Training Center. But a winter of heavy snowfall had hidden the hazard, and a snow bridge had partially formed across the hole.

"The problem is, when you get on top of the snow bridge, you can force a section of it to fall down into the hole," Prayner said.

An emergency room doctor with climbing experience, identified by the Anchorage Daily News as Jeff Baurick, was in the area. Tied to a snowmobile with its skis buried in snow, he rappelled into the hole and found the child's helmet, goggles and snowmobile.

Alaska State Troopers called the Army for assistance, Prayner said. Soldiers from the northern training center already were in the area. He ordered them to load gear onto a Small Unit Support Vehicle, or SUSV. The tracked, articulated vehicle carries far more than a snowmobile, and more important, could be used to anchor ropes for mountaineers to descend into hole.

The soldiers reached the glacier in time to help pull Baurick from the hole, and his observations led troopers to conclude the boy had died.

The training center needed the Defense Department's permission to participate in a recovery mission. That came Sunday.

A dozen soldiers and a second SUSV returned to the moulin with troopers, Roger Brown and three of his friends. The soldiers used pictures taken by Baurick to plan the recovery.

"It was a straight drop down with a considerable amount of snow overhanging what would be in the summer the full opening of the hole," Prayner said.

The soldiers positioned logs near the lip to provide stability. The overhang was 10 to 14 feet deep.

At 2 p.m. Sunday, Staff Sgt. Stephon Flynn, 36, a flight medic who works at the center, and Stephen Decker, 46, a civilian instructor, went over the lip and into the hole.

"There was a lot of snow, and a lot of snow had fallen into the hole on top of Shjon and his snowmachine, so we had to be very careful not to keep more snow falling in, to keep Flynn and Decker form getting covered," Prayner said.

On the floor of the hole, only about 15 feet in diameter, Flynn and Decker roped themselves in. They probed the bottom for stability.

They dug a shallow cave in the wall where they could take shelter from falling show. Every time a load was lifted, they entered the cave. Parts of the snow bridge tumbled down.

"They thought at some point they might get buried for a little bit," Prayner said. Three soldiers at the surface were ready to quickly descend if that happened.

Flynn and Decker spent six hours in the hole. Mostly they probed, dug snow and loaded it into "mule" bags that had to be lifted out.

Soldiers at the surface couldn't risk adding the weight of pulleys to the logs at the lip. Two roped-in soldiers at the lip used brute force to pull up the bags, which weighed more than 100 pounds each.

Other soldiers, or Brown and his companions, would drag off the bags, empty them and return them to be sent back down the hole.

The men pulled 30 bags over the lip — more than 3,000 pounds of snow, with Flynn and Decker waiting in their cave for each load to clear.

At 9:30 p.m., they found something. A metal probe had touched something soft — the boy's boot.

It took two more hours to remove the snow around Shjon's body. He was lifted to the surface at 11:30 p.m.

The body was moved to an SUSV, where Roger Brown and his friends could grieve in private.

The soldiers at the surface switched ropes, which had been damaged moving up snow, and helped Flynn and Decker climb out. The group met Shjon's mother and the boy's stepfather at the Army's Black Rapids training facility.

The soldiers were prepared to stay on the glacier at least two days.

"This one went very smooth, and I'm very proud of our men," Prayner said. "But it's difficult to be excited about it because of the circumstances and the tragedy." 

 

In a moment laced with modern irony and timeless glory, President Barack Obama awarded Thursday the Medal of Honor — the nation’s highest military decoration — to an Army chaplain and sainthood candidate who died 62 years ago in a North Korean prison camp.

Father Emil Kapaun, once a Kansas farm boy, has been hailed for decades by fellow POWs as a rousing, one-man resistance front, rallying starving inmates with clean water and stolen food while enraging his captors by openly mocking their pro-communist speeches. But days before the Catholic priest succumbed at age 35, ill with dysentery, pneumonia and a blood clot in his leg, he also raised his hand to bless and forgive the guards.

At the White House, Obama posthumously offered the medal, encased in glass, to Kapaun's tearful nephew, Ray, in front of several former American prisoners who suffered with the chaplain. Meanwhile, in the Asian country where the honoree once flashed his quiet bravado, North Korean forces are reportedly readying a missile for launch.

“Interesting timing, isn’t it?” said Amy Pavlacka, spokeswoman for the Catholic Diocese of Wichita where the chaplain served before the Korean War. “Father Kapaun took care of every person he could. He even sat with his enemy. If, globally, we all could just take a piece of that, if all of us had learned anything from him, I don’t know that we’d be in this current situation.”

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His brazen battlefield reputation — a swift departure from his gentle Kansas demeanor — was cemented in the months before Chinese forces overran U.S. soldiers and snatched survivors during the November 1950 Battle of Unsan. The chaplain had repeatedly dashed through machine gun fire to pull wounded soldiers to safety, according to witness accounts compiled by Roy Wenzl, co-author of a new book on Kapaun.

An Army captain in life, Kapaun is being touted for Catholic sainthood, an arduous process that typically takes years or even decades and ultimately requires the pope's approval. 

“This is an amazing story,” Obama said. “Father Kapaun has been called a shepherd in combat boots. His fellow prisoners, who felt his grace and his mercy, called him a saint, a blessing from God.” 

'The Good Thief'
After he and other Americans were imprisoned at a camp near the Chinese border with sub-zero temperatures looming, U.S. troops died at a rate of 20 to 40 per night due to lack of food and clean water, Wenzl said. The chaplain remolded strips of roofing tin into pots so that dirty snow could be scraped from the soil then boiled for drinking. He was dubbed “The Good Thief” after successfully pilfering provisions from the Chinese soldiers.

Food remained so scarce, however, some American prisoners began to swipe scraps from their fellow inmates. The priest offered a community solution through a subtle suggestion.

“Father Kapaun put his own rations on the floor and said a prayer: ‘Lord, thank you for this food that we not only can eat but that we can share.’ In his own quiet way,” Wenzl said, “that was calculated for effect.”

As were the chaplain’s antics when captors tried to use hunger, the frigid weather and torrents of spoken propaganda in an effort coerce U.S. prisoners to abandon their country and adopt communism.

Assuming de facto leadership, Kapaun urged the men to “keep eating, don’t give up,” according to Wenzl. “He told them, ‘We’re going to get out of here. The Army won’t leave us.’” Publicy, he frequently embarrassed the Chinese speakers during their orchestrated talks on communism to the POWs, which the troops had dubbed “brainwashing.”

“It wasn’t just that he was patriotic. It wasn’t that simple. He thought if the men gave up on their flag, their loyalty, their country, and to their oath as soldiers,” Wenzl said, “they would give up on life.”

More then two years after Kapaun died in an isolated shed that the guards called a “hospital,” the Korean War ended. Both sides exchanged prisoners of war. When some of the troops emerged from that camp near China, the first story they told other Americans was an account of their POW chaplain — and how he had kindled their spirits in the dead cold of a hopeless winter.

“A group of our POWs emerged carrying a large, wooden crucifix, nearly four feet tall," Obama said. "They had spent months on it, secretly collecting firewood, carving it — the cross and the body — using radio wire for a crown of thorns. It was a tribute to their friend, their chaplain, their fellow prisoner, who had touched their souls and saved their lives.”

 

Related: Obama awards Medal of Honor to Afghan battle hero Clinton Romesha

The Army and Air Force have reopened their Tuition Assistance pipelines to service members — following a Congressional mandate — yet similar funding remains stalled within the Marine Corps, a leading veterans’ advocate complained Wednesday.

The federal sequestration had previously blockaded all money that’s normally funneled to troops to help them pay for college classes in order to further their educations and their military careers. In most branches, that tab reaches $4,500 per year for each service member who takes the classes.

On March 21, Congress voted to order the Defense Department to locate the necessary funding to relaunch Tuition Assistance across the branches. That directive has now become law. Navy leaders had already opted to keep that program alive for sailors despite sequestration, “and we’re quite proud of that, too,” said Lt. Shawn Eklund, a Navy spokesman.

At midnight Tuesday, the Army turned on the web portal used by soldiers to formally ask for Tuition Assistance money.

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“This will allow soldiers to request Tuition Assistance for the remainder of fiscal year 2013. For the balance of (this year), the eligibility rules for use of TA, the $250 semester-hour cap, and the annual ceiling of $4,500 remain unchanged,” said Lt. Col. S. Justin Platt, an Army spokesman.

On Wednesday, the Air Force also reinstated Tuition Assistance for its members, said Air Force spokesman Lt. Col. Laurel Tingley.

"The program is going to remain exactly the same as it was before the suspension," Tingley said. 

Marine Corps public affairs officers didn’t immediately respond to emailed questions on when that branch will again offer Tuition Assistance.

“Here’s the issue: It’s been passed by Congress and signed by the president. There’s no reason this shouldn’t (already) be reinstated at the branch level,” said Michael Dakduk, executive director of Student Veterans of America, a support network with more than 500 campus chapters.

At some military posts, including North Carolina’s Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, the attendance of Marines who once used on-base college classes has been cut by more than half since DOD halted all tuition help amid the sequestration, Dakduk said.

“It’s absolutely extreme,” he added. “And that’s exactly kind of thing we don’t want to see as far as supporting service members. Especially as our military force in total begins to draw down and we have folks exit the military.”

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The Army is using an interactive video game to train soldiers how to prevent sexual assaults in the ranks, and the technology has proven so popular, the branch just ordered a sequel, according to a spokesman for the company behind the video.

But advocates for military-rape survivors vilify the video — and the philosophy behind it — as “a waste of taxpayer dollars,” an “affront to victims of sexual assault” and a tool “of limited value.”

Titled “Team-Bound,” the program streams laptop-generated scenarios, allowing users to assume the roles of a male or female specialist who witness on-base sexual harassments and eventually — at a bar favored by soldiers — the warning signs of an alcohol-induced date rape. Players must choose multiple responses throughout the episodes then watch the consequences of either intervening or ignoring the observed behaviors.

If the video’s users pick passive reactions, an intoxicated female private is eventually raped in an Army barracks after leaving the bar with an aggressive, male private. In the video, the victim is shown ultimately reporting the attack then opting to leave the service, prompting an Army official to tell viewers: “A life damaged, a career ended, a unit falling apart. But it didn’t have to be this way. All you had to do was stand up and be strong.”

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Word of the Army's requested sequel — currently in production and scheduled to film this summer — follows Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel’s decision on Monday to crack down on generals who now possess the power to overturn sex-assault sentences rendered by military juries.

A spokeswoman for the Army’s Sexual Harassment/Assault Response Prevention (SHARP) Program did not immediately respond to emailed questions about the cost, content or implementation of "Team-Bound" or its sequel.

But a spokesman for WILL Interactive, the Maryland company behind both videos, said: “As part of its overall program to address and eliminate sexual assault, the military commissioned WILL Interactive to develop ‘interactive video simulations’ that combine behavior modification role-playing with a video game element.”

In 2010, the Army “engaged” WILL Interactive to produce “Team-Bound,” said Caleb Barnhart, an account executive with New York-based BLJ Worldwide, an outside communications firm employed WILL Interactive.

“The program was so well received by service members and Army administrators that they asked WILL to develop a sequel,” Barnhart said.

'Limited value'
The original episodes were written after focus groups consisting of Army members suggested several real-life scenarios, said Marc Smrikarov, a vice president of BLJ Worldwide.

In one scene, five Army buddies wearing civilian clothes arrive together at a nightclub where several female soldiers are relaxing, also wearing casual outfits. A narrator says: “Loud music, cold beer, hot girls, game on.” The actors then portray various behaviors, each triggered by users’ responses. Information about the Army’s sexual harassment policies, definitions, and how to prevent such behavior — and, ultimately, stop a rape — is offered throughout that segment and others.

But the program is being slammed by some experts on the topic. 

“For decades, leaders in our military have thought that they can end the epidemic of sexual assault in the military simply through training programs, like the ‘Ask Her When She’s Sober’ campaign,” said Nancy Parrish, president of Protect Our Defenders, an advocacy group for military sex-assault victims. “This video game is another example of that line of thinking. Not only is it a waste of taxpayer dollars, it is affront to victims of sexual assault.

“Rape and sexual assault in the military is often about the abuse of power. It is a violent crime and should be treated as such. According to the DOD’s own statistics, the majority of these crimes are committed by an individual of higher rank,” Parrish said. The video “continues to portray rape and sexual assault as a misunderstanding of a social situation — (as with) ‘Ask Her When She's Sober’ — and places the emphasis on the victim and bystanders to intervene in an assault, instead of placing the responsibility squarely on the perpetrator.”

A leader of the Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN) — which seeks to curb sexual discrimination, harassment and assault inside the military — similarly criticized “Team-Bound” as an example of the Army trying to teach its way out of the sexual-assault problem rather than focusing on disciplining and removing offenders. 

“My take is that it’s of limited value to focus on behavioral aspects (without) addressing the role of institutional deterrents,” said Rachel Natelson, the legal and programs director at SWAN. “Outside of the military, companies can’t simply ‘train’ their employees not to commit offenses — they also have to correct offenses once they occur or they’ll be held liable under the law.”

Related:

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• Training aims to improve how military sexual assaults are investigated
• Senate panel members suggest overhaul of military justice system 
• Accuser in Air Force sexual assault case 'frustrated' at overturned verdict
• Civil Rights Commission urged to order audit of military sex-assault cases

 

Four different branches of the U.S. military are spending millions of dollars to equip troops with combat uniforms in seven different but similar camouflage patterns, says the Government Accountability Office, wasting money and potentially exposing some troops to increased risk on the battlefield.

That’s one of the findings in the GAO’s latest report on government waste, its third annual report on overlapping, redundant and/or wasteful federal government programs and spending. (GAO is the independent, nonpartisan investigative and auditing agency that works for Congress.)

The report identifies 31 new areas in the federal government "where agencies may be able to achieve greater efficiency or effectiveness" – 17 areas where the GAO found evidence of "fragmentation, overlap or duplication" and 14 where it found opportunities for significant cost savings and "revenue enhancement."

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On combat uniforms, the GAO found that the military services “employ a fragmented approach” in acquiring them.

Have a look at the visual included in the report (below). It shows images of seven different camouflage patterns for uniforms separately ordered by the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines.

Before 2002, all the military services had used only two basic camouflage patterns – one woodland pattern and one desert pattern.

Contracting separately for similar uniforms, GAO says, has resulted in “numerous inventories of similar uniforms at increased cost to the supply chain.”

GAO found that if the services partnered together in procuring uniforms, the Defense Department could save tens of millions of dollars.

Previously the Army has estimated it could save $82 million by partnering, and the Navy has estimated it could save $6 million.

Spending watchdog groups say the uniform waste is one example of a widespread problem.

“When you look at combat fatigues it's like a microcosm of the whole problem,” says Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan budget watchdog group. “Combat fatigues are an example of how, left to its own devices, government creates more complication, and it's up to Congress to reign them in and to make them concentrate and only do one thing.”

Of the 31 new areas the GAO identified, here are a few examples of areas the GAO found with overlap and duplication:

• Drug abuse prevention and treatment programs: “Federal drug abuse prevention and treatment programs are fragmented across 15 federal agencies … in fiscal year 2012, about $4.5 billion was allocated to these 15 agencies that administer 76 programs that are, in all or in part, intended to prevent or treat illicit drug use or abuse.”
• Renewable energy initiatives: “23 agencies and their 130 sub-agencies implemented 679 renewable energy initiatives in fiscal year 2010…9 agencies implemented 82 overlapping duplicative wind-related initiatives in fiscal year 2011 … including 7 initiatives that have provided duplicative … financial support to the same recipient for a single project.”

Here are a few examples of areas GAO found with significant potential cost savings or increased revenue:

• Crop insurance subsidies: Congress could save up to $1.2 billion if it reduced or limited subsidies for individual farmers.
• Medicaid supplemental payments: by identifying improper Medicaid payments, HHS could save up to hundreds of millions of dollars.
• Tobacco taxes: the federal government lost as much as $615 million to $1 billion between 2009 and 2011 “because tobacco manufacturers and consumers substituted higher-taxed smoking tobacco products with similar lower tax products.

The entire list is in the full report, GAO-13-279SP - "2013 Annual Report: Actions Needed to Reduce Fragmentation, Overlap, and Duplication and Achieve Other Financial Benefits." The report runs 293 pages and is available here.

The GAO’s report includes recommendations for policy changes in each area. But the report includes some positive statistics about the impact of the GAO’s previous efforts.

Since its first report in 2011, the GAO found that the Obama administration’s executive branch agencies and Congress “have made progress.”

As of the latest report’s completion last month, the GAO found, a majority of the areas it identified in the first two reports in 2011 and 2012 got attention from the agencies involved: 16 of the 131 areas “were addressed”; 87 were “partially addressed”; and only 27 were “not addressed.” 

Of approximately 300 “actions needed” within these areas, more than half were addressed or partially addressed: 65 were addressed, 149 were partially addressed and 85 were not addressed.

The GAO’s recommendations to reduce waste and duplication on combat uniforms were originally provided to the Defense Department in September 2012. The department responded with a statement saying, “the DOD plans to provide joint criteria and policy guidance for camouflage uniforms to the military departments by March 2013, and plans to … provide additional oversight and further pursue active partnerships for joint development and use of uniforms.”

Contacted Tuesday by NBC News for a response, representatives of the Defense Department referred to the previous statement. 

At a hearing Tuesday afternoon before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, GAO staffers testified about the report's findings and answered committee members’ questions.

In his opening statement, U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the committee’s chair, expressed disappointment that only 16 of the 131 areas the GAO previously reported got fixed.

“As budget pressure increases and the American taxpayer says I cannot afford to pay for the same services twice,” he said, “both Congress, including the GAO, and executive branch must find these programs, must find this waste and must do our job differently.”

Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the committee’s ranking Democrat, blamed Congress for failing to act and said he hoped that Republicans and Democrats could “join forces to reduce waste, fraud and abuse.”

“We should all be able to agree that a dollar wasted here is a dollar that is not put to better use elsewhere,” Cummings said.  “I think Republicans and Democrats will agree that we want to see taxpayers' dollars spent in an effective and efficient manner.”

U.S. Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, who runs the GAO and was the hearing's main witness, summed up his testimony with this observation:

“My term goes to 2025.  I hope that I won’t be reporting all these same issues in that year. But I can tell you that it won’t change unless the Congress gets involved in this process with active oversight.” 

Related story: Uncloaked: How Army is testing new camo to replace flawed design

 

An Iraq war veteran who yearns to snowboard next March at the Sochi Paralympics recently told a priest he would give his left leg to compete for his country. And then, he did.

Six weeks ago, retired Army Sgt. Carlos Figueroa allowed a surgeon to amputate below his left knee — 10 years after an IED blast rendered the limb nearly useless. The decision was surprisingly simple, he said, because it sliced away a decade of mounting pain. Yet he also acknowledged: “I did give it up because I want to get into the Paralympics.”

“When I went in, my doctor asked me: ‘What’s your biggest goal?’ I told him: ‘Be on my board within three months.’ He just said, ‘Dude, most people aren’t walking within three months,’ ” Figueroa recalled. 

Walking will come. What he can do — already — is carve down a mountain, the lone place Figueroa, 34, feels at peace: “Up there, I’m no different from anybody. No PTSD. I’m at my happiest.” On Thursday, Figueroa beamed while manhandling an Aspen, Colo., slope atop a monoski at a sports clinic for disabled veterans. As a familiar, cool breeze brushed his face, he also dreamed about racing in Russia.

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“My love for snowboarding is about loss, the loss of what I had in the military, where you’re used to being on the move, on patrols, on raids. That’s how I treat my races. The moment that gate drops, it’s like the door opening on a raid. I go full blast. I’m able to get something back that I felt was taken away. That rush. I love it.”

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have borne a bittersweet byproduct: scores of American Paralympic hopefuls. The Sochi Paralympics, to be held just after the 2014 Winter Games in that city, marks the inaugural Paralympic snowboarding event for disabled athletes. The U.S. men’s Paralympic snowboarding squad will consist of five members.

'Slim chance'
Figueroa (and those close to him) knows he’s the longest of long shots. His own coach, Mike Shea, estimates he took two years to, literally, make the leap from his own leg amputation to landing jumps. The raw nerve endings in an amputated limb must become desensitized to the harsh pounding. When the board hits the snow, the stump pushes into the prosthetic leg, “sending chills up your spine,” Shea said. “It doesn’t feel good.”

Then there’s the calendar. If Figueroa is indeed back on his board by autumn, he’ll have a limited number of sanctioned races — beginning in January 2014 — to rack up enough points to rank among the top five American men. And the U.S. Paralympic snowboarders, including Shea, compose the world’s deepest talent pool in that sport. The roster likely will be named in February.

“It’s a slim chance, a super, super small window,” Figueroa said, “but we’re still going to push.”

He needs only a sliver of possibility to kindle his hope — or better yet, someone telling him he can’t. He certainly doesn’t need two legs.

The Feb. 15 amputation came 10 years after a bomb detonated beneath his armored vehicle, ejecting him through an open roof hatch. A decade spent lugging a useless left limb (with no heel), suffering increasing back and knee pain, instantly convinced him to say “Let’s do it,” when an orthopedic surgeon in San Diego suggested, “Let’s cut.” He was done, he said, wasting another day “in a bubble” due to his injury, calling the operation “liberating.”

'Go fast and have fun'
Nobody who has heard that account is betting against Figueroa.

“With any military athlete, you can definitely see that sense of pride and determination above and beyond what you see with other athletes. Part of it is just a chance to represent their county again,” said Kevin Jardine, high performance director of Parlaympic alpine skiing and snowboarding for the U.S. Olympic Committee. “They’re willing to sacrifice a lot.”

Added Shea, who lost his leg in a 2002 wake-boarding accident: “Anything you tell Carlos, he’ll get it done. He always seems to find a way. He has no fear up there. He has passion. And I’ve learned from him the smiling gets you a long way in life.”

This week at the National Disabled Veterans Winter Sports Clinic in Aspen, organized by the Department of Veterans Affairs, Figueroa has been tempted to grab a board and shred. This is his fourth year attending. As a testament to his disregard for other people’s timelines, he couldn’t even stand on a snowboard four years ago due to his injury, yet he competed in a World Cup event for disabled snowboarders not long after that.

Until his prosthetic leg arrives, he’ll stick to monoskiing, during which he sits in a “bucket” atop one ski, using his arms to hold smaller, balancing skis.

“The first run, I took it slow. After that, I opened it up,” Figueroa said. “I just want to go fast and have fun.”

When the instructor noticed his raw speed, he warned Figueroa: “You do realize if you go down, you may peel off half your face.”

Figueroa simply grinned: “That’s alright.”

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