with the Special Forces and working for private security firms. At one time he provided security for the Baghdad bureau of Fox News. “Bear arrived on his first assignment to head up our security team in Baghdad,” recalled the bureau chief, John Fiegener. “We all knew right away that Bear was the man. You just knew no one would mess with us because Bear would make sure of it.” When car bombs went off outside the bureau, Bear coordinated the response and kept the situation under control, staying calm through it all, according to Gordon Robison, a Fox producer. “When it was over he was confident and smiling, and that attitude helped the rest of us to understand that we, too, were going to make it through.”
Bear married his wife, Laurel, in Washington State in 2005, and in July the following year they welcomed a daughter into the world, naming her Odessa. But Bear was not yet through with the war. He returned to Iraq in late September 2006.
On October 4, 2006, he was part of a three-vehicle convoy supplying security near Forward Operating Base Falcon. He was riding in the back of the second vehicle, an armored Ford F -350 driven by Kurdish Peshmerga fighters. The group they were escorting was visiting a nearby power plant. On the way to the site, the streets had been lined with Iraqi police, but the egress route was empty. The security guard sitting next to Bear radioed, “Streets are clear. That’s kind of odd isn’t it?”
Three seconds later an IED ripped through their vehicle. The Kurds in the front were killed instantly, the driver’s body left burning and the passenger’s having disintegrated. The man next to Bear was severely wounded and slipped in and out of consciousness. Bear had lost both legs below the knee.
The other two vehicles in the convoy stopped to render assistance. Small-arms fire erupted immediately after the explosion, from both sides of the street and the nearby rooftops. All the attackers wore Iraqi police uniforms. The security detail returned fire while others helped the wounded men. Tourniquets were applied to Bear’s legs to keep him from bleeding to death. It took ten minutes working under fire to free the two passengers.
The two surviving trucks sped from the area and a running firefight ensued. The tail gunner of the trailing vehicle fired at anyone he saw wearing an Iraqi police uniform. The convoy drove to the International Zone, about thirteen kilometers distant, and went directly to the combat support hospital. Bear’s partner was declared DOA. Bear was taken immediately into surgery and stabilized, but he died a short time later in surgical ICU.
The news of Bear’s death was devastating to all who knew him. The National Guard Association of Washington established a “Bear Fund” for contributions to help support his young wife and their new baby and his stepdaughter, Rees. Scores of family, friends and coworkers attended his funeral.
Yet through the sorrow, the tributes to Guy Barattieri reflected his own joy of living. Those who knew him could not help but celebrate him for the spirit and liveliness he brought to everything he did. The Class of 1992 (motto: “The Brave and the Few”) honored him and other deceased members of the class at their twentieth-anniversary reunion at West Point. “Guy had an amazing capacity to live life to the fullest and a strong desire to dedicate his life to protecting all that he held dear,” said Christopher F. Carr, a fellow West Pointer and friend. A high-school classmate, C. E. Pope, described Bear as “an American hero in every sense of the word,” and as “one of the most down-to-earth, giving individuals I ever knew. He had a love for his family that was enormous, and he wore his belief in this country on his chest like a badge of honor.” Bear’s sisters—Gina, Becky and Nicole—said in their eulogy, “We know our brother died so that others could live. He died for what he believed in. And let’s just say heaven has its hands full now.”
In the words of the West Point Alma Mater: May it be said, “Well done.”
GUY BARATTIERI MAY HAVE been exceptional among men, but he was typical of a very select group: those who struggle academically at West Point yet persevere to graduate, if barely. Reformers at the Military Academy tried to stamp out the “goat syndrome” in 1978, seeing no good in honoring the bottom academic rank, much less incentivizing the risky effort to attain it. But the cadets who still cheer for the Last Man seem to understand better the peculiar strength of character that undaunted strugglers bring to their endeavors. So today, the spirt of the Goat lives on at West Point.
The legacies of some earlier Last Men have returned to the “rockbound highland home” through their descendants, such as Jenna S. Lafferty. She is a great-great-great-granddaughter of Charles N. Warner, who was the Goat of 1862 (profiled in this volume) and hero of the Battle of Chancellorsville. Jenna entered her plebe year at the Military Academy in 2005 and did somewhat better academically than her illustrious ancestor, finishing as an honor graduate of the Class of 2009. She went on to serve honorably as an intelligence officer with the 170th Infantry Brigade Combat Team in Faryab Province, Afghanistan. Jenna’s family presented Brevet Captain Warner’s 1862 class ring to the Military Academy, where it is currently on display in the library.
In the years since Last in Their Class was published, I have been privileged to speak at the Military Academy on the topic of the Last Man, and also at colleges, historical societies and Civil War Round Tables. I even spoke at West Point’s rival, the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, about that institution’s Anchormen, counterparts to the Goats and generally demonstrating the same bold character and disarming charm. And I have gotten to know people in many walks of life who embody the truth that success in life isn’t determined by academic rank. The stories in this book stand as testimony.
THE SPIRIT OF THE GOAT
“My career as a cadet had but little to commend it to the study of those who came after me, unless as an example to be carefully avoided.”
—George Armstrong Custer
United States Military Academy, Class of June 1861
THE UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY at West Point is an institution committed to excellence, which strives to equip each cadet with the knowledge and the leadership skills they will need to be Army officers and to fight and win our nation’s wars. Yet at West Point graduation ceremonies, no cadet is applauded louder than the graduate with the lowest grades, the Goat.
Graduating last at West Point is not a badge of shame but a mark of achievement. “I’d rather be last man on a first-rate team,” said one Academy graduate, “than first man on any other.” Particularly in the nineteenth century, when graduating classes were smaller and attrition rates were much higher, the Goat was seen as a survivor. No Goats stayed at the bottom of their classes for four years straight—most of those who had stood below them flunked out by graduation. As well, given the subjectivity of grading and the caprice of circumstance, being the Goat was as much a function of luck as one of ability. Coming in last in the class was thus something earned, but also fated. The same is true in war: bad breaks can disrupt the best plans, while good luck and individual effort can bring unexpected victory. Ill fortune can make a Goat, but a Goat can make himself a hero.
The Goat of the Class of 1862, Charles Nelson Warner, was simply glad to have the chance to serve. He had failed an exam in 1861 (due in part to one of George Custer’s stunts) and had been sent home to Pennsylvania. But at the onset of the Civil War, he was given a second chance. “If I conduct myself properly,” Warner wrote his sister, “I have a chance yet to outstrip those who have excelled me here. I mean to be temperate, prompt, faithful, persevering, never shirking from my duty.” After he graduated, Warner had his baptism of fire at the Battle of Antietam, and then proved his devotion to duty with a heroic stand at Chancellorsville.
Warner was the type of Goat who struggles with his studies, finds himself in over his head, but hangs on to graduate at the very bottom. Discipline and hard work are as important as intelligence at West Point, maybe more so. James E. B. Stuart, the Confederate cavalry general who graduated