The Edmonton Sun January 14, 2003
A Widow's Mission; Marley Leger Expects To See Justice Done In Friendly Fire Hearing
By CP, STAFF
Marley Leger stood before a sprawling military complex yesterday, a world away from her Edmonton home but at the very centre of a case she hopes will provide answers about the death of her husband.
The young widow travelled to this small northern Louisiana city to honour Sgt. Marc Leger, who was killed last April when U.S. pilot Maj. Harry Schmidt dropped a bomb on Marc's training crew in Afghanistan.
"I'm here to represent Marc and it's important for me to hear all sides of the story," Marley, wearing her large gold wedding band around her neck, said at the base in Bossier City. "I hope that there will be a fair trial, that all the information will come out and that justice will be served.
"I'm very confident that will be the case. I feel very good about being here."
Marley, 28, and Marc's parents plan to spend several days at the base to observe an unusual military hearing involving two U.S. pilots charged with involuntary manslaughter, assault and dereliction of duty.
Leger said she hadn't decided what she thought should happen to the airmen.
"I'm torn a little on whether I want jail time.
"They need to be held accountable for what happened if it comes out that they were completely at fault for this," she said.
The pilots were found by Canadian and American investigative boards to have violated protocol and acted recklessly when they dropped the 225-kilogram laser-guided bomb that killed four Canadian paratroopers and injured eight on April 18 in Afghanistan.
Schmidt and his wingman, Maj. William Umbach, go before the Article 32 hearing today to face the charges and determine if there are grounds to proceed to a full court martial.
The two decorated airmen mistook the Canadians' nighttime training exercises for hostile fire and launched the assault in a region southeast of Kandahar, just 4 1/2 kilometres from the base where the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry was stationed.
The trial will set a precedent in friendly fire incidents, said University of Calgary military analyst Dr. Rob Huebert.
"It's possible this is a (U.S.) policy reaction," Huebert said.
This doesn't mean charges should be expected in every friendly fire incident, he added. "The crux here is that it was so clear that they disregarded standard procedures."
The tendency in past U.S. military friendly fire incidents has been for brass to look the other way, said Tim Brown, an American military analyst with the American think-tank GlobalSecurity.org.
"My suspicion is, at this level the military simply cannot ignore it," Brown said.
The trial is needed to reassure U.S. allies, he said."They have to get it right, or, if we're getting ready to go into Iraq, people are going to be reluctant to be our allies."
GRAPHIC: 1. photo by AP; Maj. William Umbach points towards a family member as he walks with attorney David Beck at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, yesterday. Umbach is one of the two pilots charged in the accidental bombing that killed four Canadian soldiers last April.; 2. photo of MARLEY LEGER; 'Confident'
Copyright © 2003, Sun Media Corporation
