The Life and Lonely Death of Noah Pierce

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Not everybody was as understanding. “When he joined the Army, my heart sank,” says Sally Galbraith, a family friend who was virtually a second mother to Cheryl’s children. “I thought, ‘Noah, you’re too sensitive, you’re too caring; how are you ever going to get through this?’ ”

In June 2002, Noah went to boot camp in Fort Stewart, Georgia, and began regularly writing letters home. He expressed surprise at seeing fellow soldiers break down in tears, homesick and scared, but admitted to feeling a little that way himself. “During practice we had to yell stupid stuff,” Noah wrote in August. “The drill sergeant would ask, ‘What makes the green grass grow?’ We would yell, ‘Blood, blood, blood makes the green grass grow.’”

The Iraq invasion began in March 2003, and Noah’s battalion was assigned to the front line. He rolled northward in a heavily armored infantry track vehicle equipped with surface-to-air Stinger missiles, but Saddam’s army had virtually no helicopters or jets, so Noah’s unit was tasked with kicking in doors and searching houses. By early April, American troops had reached Baghdad, and the airwaves were filled with images of Saddam’s statue toppling in Firdos Square and the troops being hailed as conquering heroes. Noah was outraged.

“It sounds like you guys in the States are for the war,” he wrote in a letter home. “All the soldiers I know including me think it is a bunch of bullshit. We came in and invaded this country and murdered a lot of innocent people. So tell me how we are heroes.”

Noah’s unit’s turf was the Abu Ghraib neighborhood on the outskirts of Baghdad. One night Noah’s platoon went out on a mission to guard buildings against looters. While he was in the turret of his truck, a van drove toward him and someone started shooting. “I just grabbed my M16 and put it on 3 round burst and led the tracers into the driver’s window,” Noah wrote a few days later. “Right away the van stopped. I just finished the magazine. I watched it for a minute and someone ran around from the passenger side and dragged (I assume the body) into the back seat. I didn’t shoot anymore and just let them leave. The gunner and track commander were asleep in the truck and didn’t wake up so I never mentioned it to anybody. I can’t wait until I get out of here and I hope I never have to do something like this again.”

The letter ended: “It’s definitely been an experience I’ll never forget, hopefully I will be able to forget most of it someday, but I doubt it.”

“Everything good Noah got from Tommy. From me he inherited an overly sensitive heart,” Cheryl says. She wants me to understand that, no matter the terrible things her son may have done, he was a good person. It was his sensitivity—her sensitivity—that burrowed under his skin, that would come to make him edgy and aggressive.

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