Photo By Lori Stewart | M. Sgt. Anthony "Tony" Davis read more read more
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by Lori S. Stewart, USAICoE Command Historian
25 NOVEMBER 2008
On 25 November 2008, M. Sgt. Anthony Davis was shot and killed by an Iraqi Army soldier during a humanitarian visit to Baaj, Iraq. Davis was a 35Z SIGINT senior sergeant assigned to a Military Transition Team (MiTT) embedded with the 2d Battalion, 11th Brigade, 3d Iraqi Division.
Tony was born in Baltimore in January 1965, one of seventeen siblings. He enlisted in the U.S. Army as a combat engineer in 1983. After four years in engineer units and two years as a records specialist, he transferred into Military Intelligence and completed German language training in July 1990. He served in SIGINT assignments at Fort Meade and in South Korea, and with the 1st Battalion, 3d Special Forces Group, at Fort Bragg (known as Camp Liberty since 2023). During a four-year assignment with the U.S. Army Office of Military Support in Washington, D.C., he deployed to both Afghanistan and Iraq. He then spent nearly three years at the Army Test and Evaluation Command (ATEC).
As Sergeant Davis completed his time at ATEC, he had twenty-five years of military service and was considering retirement. Yet, the MiTT mission appealed to his outgoing and generous nature. The MiTTs trained, advised, and mentored members of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) so they could continue effective and independent military operations once Coalition forces withdrew from their country. Sergeant Davis, father to five children aged nine to twenty-six, believed in this mission and the idea of “winning hearts and minds,” particularly those of the Iraqi children. He was quoted as saying, “We must remain vigilant and pray that we a[re] getting through to the younger generation, who will one day inherit this nation….” He and his daughter had a plan to distribute soccer balls to the Iraqi children while he was deployed, one last time, and then he would retire.
After sixty days training with the 1st Infantry Division at Fort Riley, Sergeant Davis deployed to Iraq in May 2008 as the MiTT NCOIC. His team, under the leadership of Maj. Raymond Mattox, was embedded with the 2d Battalion in the Mosul area of northwest Iraq. The team lived and trained with Iraqi battalion and conducted missions side-by-side. Davis, in addition to distributing the soccer balls sent by his daughter, was a member of a team that assessed schools and organized needed renovations.
On the morning of 25 November 2008, Davis and other members of the team traveled to Baaj, a remote town on the Iraq-Syria border. Tagging along were several visiting U.S. Marines, a few Iraqi soldiers from the MiTT’s battalion, police officers, and some village elders. They set up a food and blanket distribution point in a walled courtyard. As they prepared to open the gates to the people of the town, one of the Iraqi soldiers, a private in uniform, opened fire on the group from a few feet away. Evidence suggested Sergeant Davis pushed Major Mattox to the ground and was then hit in the chest, falling to the ground himself. One of the other team members pulled Davis to safety, but he was already dead. Also killed was Marine Capt. Warren A. Frank, and one other Marine and three civilians were wounded. The gunman, meanwhile, jumped in a waiting car driven by another Iraqi soldier and escaped. Members of his tribe later turned him over to guards at the Syrian border.
In the aftermath of the attack, the MiTT continued its work with the Iraqi battalion, but trust was irreparably eroded. Within two days, the team had been augmented by a security force of twenty Marines from the 1st Marine Division, and their combat outpost—renamed in Davis’ honor—was fortified and covered by machine gun positions. The security detail also accompanied the MiTT on all its missions. By the time the MiTT redeployed in May 2009, the gunman’s case was bogged down in the Iraqi justice system; its final outcome is unknown.
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| Date Taken: | 11.17.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 11.17.2023 12:16 |
| Story ID: | 458061 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 190 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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