Fort Bragg

Ethel Bohle was in the attic of her Severn home Friday morning, retrieving photos of her grandson, Brad, from more than five dozen albums and recalling memories of the 29-year-old soldier who was killed this week in Afghanistan. One of her favorite memories involved her husband, Edward, who died three years ago. "They would do woodworking together, and Brad even had a lathe in his house," she said. "After they were done working, Pop would make him a milkshake and shave the ice for it. When Brad's father came to tell me the bad news, he said, 'I guess Brad and Pop are having a milkshake.

Previously undisclosed conversations and letters by Timothy J. McVeigh to his younger sister before the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City portray him as so deeply frustrated and angry that when the bomb exploded on April 19, 1995, his family suspected him almost immediately.His sister, Jennifer McVeigh, told FBI investigators she had an "eerie feeling" he was involved. His father, William McVeigh, said he had worried that his son would do something to get himself in serious trouble and added that his ex-wife, McVeigh's mother, ,, thought her son "did the bombing."

NEW YORK -- Federal prosecutors have filed secret charges against a former sergeant in the U.S. Special Forces who is suspected of switching sides in the war against terrorism and joining the global campaign to attack Americans mounted by the Saudi exile Osama bin Laden.The charges are part of federal authorities' efforts to prove that bin Laden was behind the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa in August and a series of other attacks against U.S. soldiers in Somalia, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

WASHINGTON -- The Army has reversed itself and authorized a coveted combat badge for hundreds of soldiers who served under fire as advisers in El Salvador, recognition delayed in some cases for more than 15 years by domestic politics and Pentagon red tape.Gen. Dennis J. Reimer, the Army's chief of staff, has approved the Combat Infantryman Badge for soldiers -- mostly Green Berets -- who served as advisers from 1981 to 1992, when a peace accord between the Salvadoran government and Marxist rebels ended the conflict, the Army said in a statement yesterday.

WASHINGTON -- For three grueling months of Army Ranger training, Sgt. Jason K. Conklin will learn to survive in all climates, dine on bugs, track an enemy for miles and kill swiftly and quietly.But there is one mission the 28-year-old paratrooper refuses to accept: strolling into the local social services office with his wife and two children."I'm not going to walk in there and apply for food stamps," says Conklin, though he knows at least four other soldiers stationed with him at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, N.C., who accept the help.

HAVRE DE GRACE -- Smiling affectionately at Milly, his wife of nearly 52 years, Carl Wheeler, 75, said, "It was a tragedy that turned to love," forged in the bitter fighting in 1944 on D-Day in Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge.In one of the most poignant love stories to come out of World War II, Mildred Wheeler was married at 17, but was hardly a wife before she was a widow. Then she was a wife again, wed to her first husband's best friend - a man she knew only through postscripts to her husband's letters.

JOHN AND Joann Clough of Brooklyn Park are proud to announce that their daughter, Pvt. Melissa (Missy) Dawn Clough, has completed Army basic training at Fort Bragg, N.C., and her training as an ammunition specialist at Red Stone Arsenal, Ala.After completing training, she was back in Brooklyn Park for a 10-day visit. She is stationed at Fort Lewis, Wash.Summer reading campCamp Read-A-Lot continues at the Brooklyn Park Library, 1 E. 11th Ave. Children entering kindergarten through sixth grade in the fall are invited to participate.

NEW YORK -- The wait for a new novel from Tom Wolfe willhave lasted 10 years -- until next November -- when his publisher brings out the writer's first hardcover fiction since the popular "Bonfire of the Vanities."Meanwhile, Wolfe is offering an appetizer in the pages of Rolling Stone, where "Bonfire" first appeared as a 27-part "serial novel," and his book publisher has offered a few other details of the much-anticipated work."Ambush at Fort Bragg," a tale of sensationalistic TV reporting that debuts in the Dec. 12 issue of Rolling Stone, was spun off by Wolfe from his novel-in-progress.

Van Murray Sim, 80, supervised Army LSD testsDr. Van Murray Sim, retired chief of the medical research division of the U.S. Army biomedical laboratory at Edgewood Arsenal, died of respiratory failure Thursday at his home in Bel Air. He was 80.Dr. Sim worked at the Harford County installation from 1952 until his retirement in 1980.In 1975, it was revealed that Dr. Sim had supervised an Army LSD testing program from 1956 to 1967 that administered the drug and other powerful hallucinogens to servicemen and civilians.

WASHINGTON -- The Army, shocked by last week's arrest of two openly white-supremacist paratroopers for allegedly murdering a black couple near Fort Bragg, N.C., launched a new probe yesterday to determine the extent to which soldiers are participating in hate groups.The investigation, to be conducted by the Army inspector-general, was announced by Army Secretary Togo D. West Jr. after he conferred with Defense Secretary William J. FTC Perry and Gen. Dennis J. Reimer, the Army chief of staff.

Ethel Bohle was in the attic of her Severn home Friday morning, retrieving photos of her grandson, Brad, from more than five dozen albums and recalling memories of the 29-year-old soldier who was killed this week in Afghanistan. One of her favorite memories involved her husband, Edward, who died three years ago. "They would do woodworking together, and Brad even had a lathe in his house," she said. "After they were done working, Pop would make him a milkshake and shave the ice for it. When Brad's father came to tell me the bad news, he said, 'I guess Brad and Pop are having a milkshake.

At the Air Force Student Detachment barracks at Fort Meade, almost every room contains mold. Water drips from leaky pipes into buckets on the floor. Shower water seeps down a hallway wall. Forty-seven airmen live in these half-century-old barracks, among the worst on the Army installation in western Anne Arundel County. "I think we've gone beyond the point of saying these barracks are unsuitable," said Maj. Danny S. Chung, commander of a Marine Corps detachment at Fort Meade. "I think many people in the chain of command have realized that."

When Ari D. Brown-Weeks learned that his wife planned to visit Washington, he asked that she go to Arlington National Cemetery, take photos and e-mail them to him in Iraq. "He especially wanted a video of the changing of the guards," said Ashley Weeks, 21, a Harford County native. "I took the pictures on a beautiful, peaceful day, and I know he saw them." Specialist Brown-Weeks, 23, an Army paratrooper who had lived in Abingdon for two years, was killed in a truck accident in Baghdad with six other soldiers Monday, military officials said.

Their story began on her first day at the Johns Hopkins University, the day Jenna Parkinson, a freshman, met Jonathan Grassbaugh, an intimidating senior and the battalion commander in the ROTC program she joined. It ended nearly six years later on a spring day at Fort Bragg, N.C., when Parkinson - now Jenna Grassbaugh - learned that just 10 months after getting married, she is now a widow. "When I saw the two of them at my door, I just thought it had to [be] something else," said Jenna Grassbaugh, 22, a first-year law school student at The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va. "I just wanted them to tell me he was hurt and not gone.

A soldier from Gaithersburg was killed in combat in Iraq on Wednesday, the Department of Defense announced yesterday. Army Spc. Thomas J. Barbieri, 24, a gunner assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C., died when he was hit by small-arms fire from enemy forces during combat operations south of Baghdad, the military said. The soldier's parents, Thomas and Carolann Barbieri, were grieving yesterday and not able to talk with the media, a family friend said. Specialist Barbieri, who joined the Army in October 2004, trained at Fort Benning, Ga., and became an infantryman in January 2005.

The U.S. Army has dropped its case against the only officer to face criminal charges in connection with the beating deaths of two prisoners held by the United States in Afghanistan, a military spokesman said yesterday. The officer, Capt. Christopher M. Beiring, led a reservist military police company at the main U.S. detention center in Afghanistan when the two men were killed in December 2002. The prisoners died after guards kneed them repeatedly in the legs while each was shackled to the ceiling of his cell.

Maryland Christmas tree farmers are combining savvy marketing with a bit of holiday cheer this year by donating trees to U.S. military bases. Seven Maryland tree farmers participated in Trees for Troops, a donation program run by the National Christmas Tree Association's charitable offshoot, the Christmas Spirit Foundation. Trees from 15 states will be distributed to Fort Benning, Ga.; Fort Bragg, N.C.; Fort Campbell, Ky.; Fort Lewis, Wash.; and Camp Pendleton, Calif. FedEx is picking up and delivering the trees along three routes -- East Coast, West Coast and Midwest -- by Friday.

After nearly a year serving with the U.S. Army's Provincial Reconstruction Team in Afghanistan, Maj. Edwin Singer III of Manchester returned this weekend to his family, fireworks and the most conspicuous "welcome home" sign his father could muster. Standing at one of Carroll County's busiest intersections, the 6-foot card reads, "Welcome home, Major Eddie Singer" in bold letters. The senior Singer, also named Ed, had permission from the State Highway Administration to erect the display on a grassy patch at Routes 26 and 32 in Eldersburg.

FORT BRAGG, N.C. - Attorneys for Pfc. Lynndie R. England told a military judge yesterday that the young Army reservist was sleep-deprived and coerced when she told investigators that Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad had been humiliated and photographed "just for fun." Defense attorneys want three incriminating statements England made about the abuses thrown out by the presiding judge, Col. Stephen R. Henley, before she stands trial in January in military court. Her lawyers also want to exclude the now-infamous photographs that show England flashing a thumbs-up sign near naked Iraqis and holding a leash tied to the neck of a nude detainee.

An Army commander at Fort Bragg, N.C., has ordered Pfc. Lynndie R. England to face a military court-martial on 19 charges connected to the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, overriding an earlier recommendation that some counts against the young Army reservist be dropped. The Army announced yesterday that Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, commander of the XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg, referred England to trial by a general court-martial. Her trial, scheduled to begin Jan. 17, is for now the only one arising from the scandal to play out inside the United States.