Chris Amico: Journalist

Download PDF

LANCASTER — Spc. Eric Huff is ready to be done with the Army. Ten months after an attack by three fellow American soldiers outside his barracks in South Korea that nearly killed him, the stricken soldier has not fully recovered.

Deborah Huff, Eric’s mother, wants her son out of the military, too. “I know my son is not fit to be in the U.S. Army anymore,” she said in an interview at her Lancaster home.

Huff spent a weekend in Lancaster, where he grew up, following the last of his attackers’ courts-martial. He has been stationed at Fort Lewis, Wash., since the attack.

“He’s come a long way, but he’s not like a normal 20-year-old male,” Deborah Huff said. “He can’t do things he’s supposed to be able to do.”

Shortly after midnight on Dec. 10, three soldiers from the 305th Quartermasters Company attacked Huff outside his barracks at Yongsan Garrison in Seoul, South Korea.

According to a preliminary report by the Army’s Criminal Investigations Division, the three soldiers knocked Huff to the ground, then punched, kicked and stomped on his face and head, leaving him with a fractured skull.

The next thing Huff remembered was waking up in the base hospital, his parents at his bedside. He had been scheduled to leave South Korea on Dec. 10 after a two-year tour of duty.

Yongsan Garrison, in the South Korean capital, is the headquarters of the 8th Army and U.S. Forces Korea, which have maintained roughly 37,000 troops in South Korea since the 1950-53 Korean War. United Nations Command and U.S.-Republic of Korea Combined Forces Command also are based there.

Plans are under way to move Yongsan Garrison out of Seoul and to reduce the American presence on the Korean peninsula. U.S. forces could be reduced by a third by 2008.

All three of the soldiers who attacked Huff in December pleaded guilty to the assault, and each will spend the next decade in a military prison, then leave the Army with a dishonorable discharge. The sentences also carried demotions to the Army’s lowest rank, private.

The last to be convicted, Pfc. Henry Hall, threw the first punch that knocked Huff to the ground. Pfc. Demetry L. Randall and Pvt. Rodney A. Brackens then continued to pummel Huff until he was bleeding and unconscious. The three attackers fled and did not call for medical help for Huff.

During his court-martial, Hall said he wanted to prove to Randall and Brackens that he didn’t “hit like a girl,” according to Stars & Stripes, which covered the trials in South Korea.

In the eyes of Huff’s mother, the scales are far from even.

“It’s never justice,” Deborah Huff said Friday.

“But this we know: He’s never gonna want to ‘be a man’ again,” she added, referring to Hall. “At least no other parents will have to go through what we went through, because somebody wanted to prove he was a man.”

All three attackers apologized to Huff in court. Hall said after his conviction: “I pray every day for him. … I just wish I could change a mistake. I gotta live with it,” according to Stars & Stripes.

Huff and his mother have a hard time forgiving the three soldiers.

“He made the first punch. He started everything,” Huff said of Hall. “I don’t know how he could be sorry for that.”

His mother added, “Maybe if he hadn’t thrown that first punch, maybe nothing would’ve happened.”

Maj. Elizabeth Robbins, an Army spokeswoman at the Defense Department, said the attacks contradicted core Army values. The spokeswoman was not familiar with all the details of Huff’s case, but what she knew left her shocked and disgusted.

“I’ve never heard of anything like this in my 17 years,” she said. “We’re a values-based army. Clearly, physical violence does not meet the standards that we set for ourselves. The Army takes very seriously soldiers who fail to treat people as they should be treated.”

As for Huff’s future in the Army, Robbins said the Army’s first priority in such a situation would be the soldier’s health. Federal law prohibited Robbins from giving specifics about Huff’s case, the spokeswoman said, and she spoke in broad terms.

“We certainly don’t want to move someone out of service too expeditiously,” Robbins said. “You can still help someone when they’re within the family, the embrace.”

Once a soldier’s health stabilizes, a medical review board will decide whether to keep him in the Army or offer a medical discharge. The board also considers the soldier’s abilities and his use to the Army.

“If a soldier was an infantryman, and he badly damaged his ankles and could never run again, he might be able to do honorable service as a clerk or a mechanic, but not as an infantryman,” Robbins said. Decisions apply to the individual on a case-by-case basis.

“The last thing we want to do is endanger the soldier or his colleagues,” Robbins said. “We exist to fight and win the nation’s wars. It’s not a job program.”

In South Korea, Huff worked mostly on radios. He performed maintenance and had started procuring parts for his unit, the 17th Aviation Brigade. He liked the work, he said.

After the Army, Huff planned to go to college and study computers, using money earned from his service.

Now at Fort Lewis near Tacoma, Wash., Huff spends his days doing odd jobs in a unit of injured soldiers. He collects linens for laundry. Sometimes he cleans barracks. Mostly, he sits in his room.

“They come up with little details that the medical unit I’m in has to do, like whatever,” he said.

Huff is still getting physical therapy, including regular ultrasounds on his left hip, which started hurting when the feeling came back into the left side of his body.

Worse, Huff has no transportation, and doesn’t know Washington state well.

“All I do is sit in my room and sit at my computer while they think of something for me to do downstairs,” he said.

Huff could barely walk after the attack, and underwent physical and occupational therapy in a Veterans Affairs hospital in Palo Alto. Now he can drive, although with restrictions.

“I still get headaches,” he said Friday, “but I’m used to that.”

The wounded hip slows him down the most. He has trouble getting in a car.

“I can get the right leg in no problem,” he said, “but I can’t lift my left leg. I have to pull it up with my hands.”

More than anything, Huff is bored, tired of the Army and getting depressed.

“I don’t want to be there. I’ve been there too long already,” he said. Another soldier in his unit has been at Fort Lewis for two years. “I don’t know if I could be there that long.”

Huff’s enlistment runs until August 2006, but he wants out “as soon as possible.”

“I’m tired of waiting and doing nothing,” he said. “I want to be in school, too. That’s one reason I joined the Army, to pay for school.”

Huff suffered brain damage in the attack — his doctors have said he will never remember the incident — and he could have difficulty picking up new skills. But the soldier believes he can recover, and he can live the life he wants.

“It’s most likely going to be a challenge, because my head hurts a lot,” he said. “But I’m gonna try.”

camico@avpress.com