After the Niger Ambush, I Trusted the Army to Find Answers. Instead, I Was Punished.

"It was the best week ever. It was the worst week ever. I welcomed new life, and saw how quickly life can be taken.

On Oct. 2, 2017, my wife, Brooke, gave birth to our second daughter, Eva. During the final months of Brooke’s pregnancy, I was deployed to the West African country of Niger with Third Special Forces Group. I was lucky; my chain of command decided earlier in the year that I would be allowed to fly home for the birth, a decision that reinforced my trust in them. In hindsight, that decision left me grappling with how things could have been different if I had stayed.

While flying out of Niger was logistically very simple, especially compared with my previous deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq, the timing was challenging because I was still getting familiar with the demands from recently deploying as a new company commander in charge of teams of Green Berets. Brooke was experiencing early contractions back at home in Fort Bragg, N.C., and there were constant phone calls and deliberations about when I should jump on a plane to be there on time and to maximize my 10 days of paternity leave.

Finally, I hopped on a flight and made it home in 20 hours. Holding my daughter for the first time, I was flooded with the joy of fatherhood and with relief that the plan to get home in time worked. Together, Brooke and I adjusted to disrupted sleep patterns, dealt with the uncertainty of feeding and tried to live in a hospital room. I was uneasy for the first day about not being in control of my surroundings, but by the morning we were scheduled to leave the hospital I was more relaxed.

On Oct. 4, in the midst of signing papers, getting the car seat inspected by the nurse and taking the last hospital pictures, I received a text message from a colleague, saying, “Hey man, there’s been an incident. You need to come to work.”

As I frantically searched on my phone for news that offered some clue of what had happened, a million thoughts raced through my mind. I worried about my wife and children. I worried about my soldiers and our partners overseas. I worried about their families back home. I worried about the worst-case scenario: the death of one of my soldiers. But even my worst imaginings could not compare to the truth I would soon learn, standing inside the Third Special Forces Group commander’s office an hour later.

Four of my soldiers, and five of their Nigerien partner force soldiers, had been killed in an ambush by Islamic extremists outside the village of Tongo Tongo in northwestern Niger, near the Mali border. Never before had I felt so helpless.