Pseudonymous TNR diarist “Scott Thomas” claimed that, as a soldier in stationed in Baghdad, he witnessed a buddy take a piece of a child’s skull from a “Saddam-era dumping ground” that they had discovered and wear it on his head as a joke. Over the weekend, Major Kirk Luedeke, a public affairs officer at the base where Thomas was allegedly stationed, denied that any mass grave had been found in the area Thomas described. Now, another soldier from that base has e-mailed Michael Goldfarb to shed some light on the discrepancy:

There was a children’s cemetery unearthed while constructing a Combat Outpost (COP) in the farm land south of Baghdad International Airport. It was not a mass grave. It was not the result of some inhumane genocide. It was an unmarked cometary where the locals had buried children some years back. There are many such unmarked cemeteries in and around Baghdad. The remains unearthed that day were transported to another location and reburied. While I was not there personally, and can not confirm or deny and actions taken by Soldiers that day, I can tell you that no Soldier put a human skull under his helmet and wore it around. The Army Combat Helmet (ACH) is form fitted to the head. Unlike the old Kevlar helmets, the ACH does not have a gap between the helmet and the liner, only pads. It would have been impossible for him to have placed and human skull, of any size, between his helmet and his head. Further more, no leader would have tolerated this type of behavior. This type of behavior is strictly forbidden in the U.S. Army and would have made the individual involved subject to UCMJ actions.

Luedeke responded to this explanation:

The children’s cemetery sounds like more of a probable explanation. Something like that is completely different from a “mass grave,” where the inference was clearly made that the bodies were murdered. We were not notified of the discovery and movement of the cemetery, but as I said earlier- there is probably a grain of truth to what “Scott Thomas” said. If he was part of the detail, then it would explain the discussion about the bones. But, it still doesn’t account for the disrespect allegedly paid to the remains by “Scott’s” cohorts.

I think Luedeke strikes the right tone here. When you add all the pieces of this story together, the picture that emerges is that of an aspiring writer stationed in Iraq who just can’t seem to resist embellishing his stories. A neighborhood with broken sewage pipes becomes a “Little Venice” complete with waist-deep canals of muck, a careless driver becomes a dog-hunting sadist, a children’s cemetery becomes a mass grave, etc.