A medic found him sitting in the back of a humvee long after other wounded men had been evacuated. With his painful broken jaw and rib, South had to ride all the way back to the FOB, bouncing along on hard roads, with the other Alpha survivors.
Kelly, the Second Platoon sergeant, was waiting at the battalion aid station when the dirty, exhausted troops returned.
He watched as the men, spent and bedraggled, pulled themselves to their feet. One of them - the medic, Dave Jock - didn't go inside the steel building. Instead, he disappeared behind the building.
Kelly went to check on him.
As he approached, Jock looked up at the bigger man and burst into sobs.
On a flight layover at the airport in Shannon, Ireland, Sgt. Greg Torricellas, a Havertown carpenter, was headed home for two weeks of leave.
He called his fiancee, Anna Marie McConaghy, in Delaware County, to tell her when he'd be coming into the Philadelphia airport.
He said he was feeling blue about Jeffcoat and Krout, whose deaths he had learned about from the Armed Forces Network while en route.
"She said something about Pellegrini," he remembered. "I said, 'No, no, Pellegrini's not dead.' "
But McConaghy named the Alpha soldiers who'd been killed Aug. 9. She'd heard it on the news in Philadelphia.
So many. Torricellas was dumbstruck. He couldn't talk. He had to get off the phone.
Tomorrow: Homecoming
Contact staff writer Tom Infield at 610-313-8205 or tinfield@phillynews.com.
