Trey Corrales, a former Schofield Barracks soldier killed an unarmed Iraqi, but was acquitted of murder. Several witnesses died in a helicopter crash before they could testify. His wife said “There’s something else that God wants you to do.” How about repent?
Source: http://www.mysanantonio.com/military/59190907.html
GI looks ahead with no regrets
By Sig Christenson – Express-News
Trey Corrales is in a jujitsu class on his back, one foot on his opponent’s waist and the other in the nook of his right arm.
This is called the “open guard” position, and in a moment Corrales will use it to throw retired Air Force Master Sgt. Mike Craft over him, a move called a monkey flip.
The taller and heavier Craft wants to gain the advantage, but jujitsu is a martial art that turns strength into weakness – a subject Corrales, a Burbank High School graduate, can talk about.
“In jujitsu, we don’t take anything the enemy doesn’t give us,” he said after wrapping up a recent class in Leon Valley. “We only attack what the enemy gives us to attack.”
A veteran of Iraq and an Army master sergeant, Corrales fought an insurgency that turned the power of U.S. mechanized infantry into its Achilles’ heel. After surviving snipers and suicide bombers, he faced a sensational murder trial over the killing of an unarmed Iraqi during a raid.
Prosecutors said Corrales, a 36-year-old San Antonio native, shot the Iraqi during a nighttime raid in Kirkuk and planted an interpreter’s rifle on the mortally wounded man. They said he ordered Spc. Christopher P. Shore to finish off the Iraqi that day, June 23, 2007.
Soldiers offered damning testimony in an evidentiary hearing for Shore months before Corrales’ trial. The hearing examiner said Corrales, a leader of that raid, “left no question through his actions that he intended to kill a ‘bad guy’ whether he was a combatant or not.”
Shore cut a plea bargain and testified against Corrales in a trial last year in Hawaii. A jury of war veterans acquitted Corrales, who had served with distinction in Afghanistan before going to Iraq. Shore was granted clemency after the verdict and remains in the Army. He has been promoted from specialist to sergeant.
Nearly 18 months later, Corrales has left Hawaii. Last week, he and his wife, Lily, and their two children stayed at his father’s 20-acre ranch in Thelma. They had a lot on their agenda – the Alamo and Natural Bridge Caverns, the Tower of the Americas and watching high school football games.
For Corrales, the trial and international media attention are over. He harbors no bitterness toward Shore, who testified that Corrales once held a knife to an Iraqi’s tongue. He said he isn’t angry with a parade of other soldiers who testified against him or even an Army that considered seeking the death penalty.
And as he moves on, there’s another thing: Ask Corrales if he is sorry for killing Salih Khatab Aswad, if he’d do anything differently, if he has any regrets, and he’ll say no, though he could improve on some things, particularly the way he put the Army ahead of his family.
“I am sorry that the man died,” Corrales said after a long pause. “As you know, we did try to save his life afterwards, and if it wasn’t for the – as they testified in court – if it wasn’t for the actions … taken by myself and a combat medic, which was ordered by me, he stayed alive for 21/2 days.
“I’m sorry that anybody perishes in any way, shape or form. You know what I mean? As far as the situation in itself, as far as me firing rounds, I try not to second-guess myself in that aspect,” he continued. “I’m trying to keep it in context that, hey, this is my job, if ever a situation arises that I feel I’m 51 percent threatened by the enemy and I need to take action, then by all means I’m going to do so. And the reason I say this is because if I start doubting myself of the actions I took that night, as far as that portion of it, then it could possibly be fatal to me in future combat operations.”
Corrales expects to deploy – and wants to – but that’s later. Right now, he’s headed to Fort Jackson, S.C., a large basic training post. A master sergeant, he’ll report next month and oversee 165 or so recruits and drill instructors.
But as he marks 15 years in uniform, some things will be different, thanks to having been put on trial.
At home, Corrales always put the Army first – even at the expense of his family. He said that as he prepared to go to Afghanistan in 2004, his son once complained, “Gosh dad, you spend more time with those guys than you do with me.”
“Before,” he said, “it was always Army, Army, Army.”
But he was always driven. Long before becoming an Army Ranger, Corrales was a playmaker on the Burbank football team’s first-team varsity defense. An evaluation just before the Kirkuk incident described him as “always at the tip of the spear.” He led 52 successful Small Kill Team missions in Kirkuk in 2006 and 2007.
SKTs are three- to five-man sniper teams that work over 24 hours where roadside bombs have been laid. Kirkuk that year was a high-risk deal.
By the time he was charged in Aswad’s death, half of Corrales’ platoon had been killed or wounded. One of his gunners, Spc. Frederick “Freddy” Meyers, was shot in the head but survived. Another GI suffered severe brain injury when a suicide bomber struck Corrales’ convoy Sept. 28, 2006 – his son Trey Albert II’s birthday.
Facing death on a gurney or life in prison helped open his eyes. But, so, too, did surviving those missions and not being on the one that would have claimed his life had he not been charged and taken from the unit.
His replacement and nine other GIs were killed in a helicopter crash Aug. 22, 2007. Corrales thinks it was “a sign that things happened for a reason.” At first, he felt guilt that he should have been killed, but his wife had another view.
“I’m not ready to tell our children they don’t have a daddy anymore, so take that as a blessing,” Lily told him. “There’s something else that God wants you to do.”
But just what that is isn’t yet clear.
On the evening of his ju-jitsu class he works up a sweat, easily throwing Craft to the mat, despite the retired airman being 25 pounds heavier. As darkness settles, Corrales talks and laughs, Lily and the kids standing nearby.
His ordeal was “a bumpy road,” one made necessary by the military justice system, and Corrales said he doesn’t hold it against the Army. He said that quitting out of spite or in an emotional moment, an option some might take, isn’t for him.
“We didn’t fight so hard to stay in,” he said. “What happened doesn’t change my belief. My job is an infantryman. I’m a Ranger. That is the job I chose. I love what I do. I love being in the Army, I love it. There’s nothing that’s going to change that.”
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