Last September, Army Pvt. Jeremiah W. Carmack wrote of how he had found the girl of his dreams, someone who gave him focus and a renewed sense of purpose and hope.
But the 30-year-old soldier also noted on his MySpace blog that he and his German girlfriend were having difficulties, and that he was feeling blue and confused.
“I just wanted to get this out there and off my mind,” Carmack wrote, “because keeping things locked up inside leads to bad things in life.”
Tragically, the muse would prove quite prophetic six months later.
Ten days ago, Carmack, armed with an M-4 carbine left a Schweinfurt military post and made his way 20 miles east to the small farming community of Altershausen, where his former girlfriend resides with her mother. Thus began a sequence of events that ended a few hours later when Carmack was fatally shot in a fallow field following a standoff with a German SWAT team.
“They told him (in English), ‘Don’t move,’ but he didn’t do that,” Karl-Heinz Schmitt, a police spokesman from Nuremberg, would say the next day.
How Carmack managed to slip the weapon off-post March 13 is part of an Army inquiry that is expected to take two to three weeks, according to Lt. Gen. Kenneth Hunzeker, the V Corps commander. Whether Carmack, a logistics specialist with prior military service, had any help is also part of the investigation.
German prosecutors in Bamberg are looking into the matter, too. While Schmitt said there is no indication the German SWAT team acted improperly, authorities are procedurally bound to review the entire incident, an official in the prosecutor’s office said Thursday.
Because many documents have yet to be filed “the investigation could take a month or two,” the official said.
An autopsy last week concluded that Carmack died from two gunshot wounds to the chest. While the 2nd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division soldier had at least 15 rounds of ammunition with him, there is no indication he fired a shot, though Schmitt said police on the scene stated that Carmack raised his weapon.
A gun pointed at a police officer makes for “a very dangerous situation,” Schmitt said as he stood next to a muddy field near where the standoff ended.
That also must have been the sentiment of Anne Frank, the 23-year-old woman at the heart of this saga.
Frank and her mother were not home the evening of March 13, when Carmack entered their home through a basement window, according to her initial statement, Schmitt later said. Carmack waited for them to arrive.
The details of what happened right after Frank and her mother returned home are murky. Schmitt said Frank told authorities her ex-boyfriend bound her wrists with a type of flex-cuff, the kind typically used by military police. Apparently, the mother didn’t enter the house right away, or, if she did, was initially unaware of the severity of the situation. At this point, the time was approximately 9:30 p.m.
Exactly what Carmack was trying to achieve is unknown, Schmitt said. But Carmack, who hailed from Union, Ohio, appears to have been upset over losing the love of his life. On his blog, Carmack told friends that Frank “brought a light to my darkened world.”
Frank, who lived for a few years in the United States, has been described by one former soldier in less than flattering terms. At least one other soldier, unknown to the first, has conveyed similar sentiments. But other people have spoken highly of Frank, calling her happy and vivacious.
Schmitt recoils at any suggestion that Frank was responsible for what happened.
Armed with a gun, Carmack “broke into her house,” Schmitt said. “Obviously, he wanted to take her hostage.”
As the two occupied the same room for the last time, Frank convinced her former beau to loosen the cuff around her wrist. Somehow she managed to escape, which compelled Carmack to vacate the premises, bordered on two sides by a field. By now, the police were involved.
Not long afterward, Carmack was spotted by a high-tech police helicopter in a field several hundred yards from the house, near a slight ravine lined by leafless trees. Commandos on the ground moved in to arrest Carmack, characterized by those who knew him as a respectful and reflective young man.
One wrong move later and he was down, struggling to breathe. He died in a German hospital a few hours later.
“How many of us,” Carmack wrote on his blog, “can say we have found that one person that you want to spend the rest of your life with? And out of those, how many really do?”
