War in Iraq
Christopher S. Potts, 38, of Tiverton, leaves a wife and two children
02:03 AM EDT on Tuesday, October 5, 2004
TIVERTON -- After one snowfall last winter, Chris Potts pushed
his snowblower next door to the Gagnes' and with his toddler son,
Jackson, in tow, cleaned off the elderly couple's driveway.
Not long afterward, Leo Gagne, a retired Navy tailor who runs a small
mending business from his basement, had Potts' National Guard uniforms
hanging by his sewing machines.
Potts had orders to ship out for Iraq and asked his neighbor whether he
might take in his uniform's dress jacket a bit and sew some insignia
patches on his sleeves.
In Gagne's basement shop, Potts, a marine mechanic, confided how hard it
would be to leave his wife, Terri, and his two sons Christopher Jr., 16,
and Jackson, 2; to leave the life they had settled into since recently
moving to East Beardsworth Road.
But March arrived nonetheless, and Potts, who had served with the Guard
for 14 years, stashed in his bag the uniforms tailored by his neighbor
and went off to war.
Yesterday the vagaries of war returned to the small ranches and
split-levels of East Beardsworth Road, as news slowly filtered along the
hill that Sgt. Christopher S. Potts had died in a gun battle in Iraq on
Sunday, his 38th birthday.
"Oh, that surely is sad news," Leo Gagne said as Potts' relatives and
friends gathered next door to mourn. "Sad, sad."
Gagne recalled how the other day he had seen Terri Potts outside in the
backyard. They talked over the fence. Gagne asked how her husband was
doing.
"We're halfway home," she told him.
POTTS WAS STATIONED Sunday with about eight other American soldiers at a
traffic checkpoint in Taji, a dozen miles north of Baghdad, when the
soldiers came under fire from insurgents, said National Guard spokesman
Lt. Col. Michael McNamara.
Another American soldier, from Arkansas, also died in the battle, which
occurred about 5 p.m. Iraq time, McNamara said.
Potts served with A Battery, 1st Battalion, 103rd Field Artillery of the
Rhode Island National Guard. When not attached to the artillery guns, he
was often stationed at traffic checkpoints, McNamara said, to control
insurgent movements through the area.
Sunday's attack was typical of the fighting Americans face every day,
McNamara said. The insurgents "just open fire. It can happen anywhere,
anytime."
Potts' death was announced yesterday morning at a news conference
attended by National Guard Maj. Gen. Reginald Centracchio, Governor
Carcieri and seven of Potts' comrades' wives, who make up the core of
the 103rd's Family Readiness Group.
Terri Potts, a member of the group, has attended some of the same
grief-management training seminars. Together, the wives offer support to
spouses and family members who lose loved ones in war. Yesterday the
women cried for one of their own.
"This is a sad day for our state, for our Guard, and an enormously sad
day for Christopher's family," said Carcieri, who asked for prayers for
Potts' family and for the 471 other local National Guard members still
in Iraq.
"There is nothing you can say or do at a time like this," Carcieri said,
but offer a hug.
Carcieri acknowledged the growing anxiety many feel about the war, as
deployments continue and deaths mount.
"These deployments get more difficult and you see families separated,"
the governor said. Relatives "are worried every minute of every day. It
is a very difficult time. We all feel it. We all wish this war was over,
the sooner the better."
Yet, in the face of an extremely difficult job, Carcieri said, local
Guard members are performing "extraordinarily well."
Potts was the fourth Rhode Island National Guard member to die in Iraq.
(Two of those men lived in Massachusetts.) Eight other Rhode Islanders
have also died in Iraq or Afghanistan since the Sept. 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks. Sixty-eight other Rhode Island National Guard members
have been injured.
This was Potts' and his unit's first assignment overseas. He was
expected home in April.
Potts was raised in Middletown, McNamara said. He worked for several
years at New England Boat Works in Portsmouth as a mechanic. Fellow
employees yesterday honored the family's wishes that they not speak
publicly yet about him.
Potts' body is expected in Rhode Island in about a week, McNamara said.
Yesterday afternoon, Greg Manchester was working around his house on
East Beardsworth Road when a reporter asked him whether he had heard the
news about his neighbor Christopher Potts.
Manchester replied with a one-word question:
"Iraq?"
The reporter nodded.
Manchester's eyes filled with tears.
