PART ONE: Lives Of Service And Sacrifice: Remembering Two American Soldiers

Army Staff Sgt. Richard Eaton’s rich life story is the stuff of fiction. Many of the details will never be known because of the clandestine nature of his work as an Army counterintelligence agent in South Korea, Honduras, Panama, El Salvador and the Philippines during tumultuous world events. In his brief life of just thirty-seven years, this exceptional individual exemplified the very best qualities of a soldier and a man: character, courage, commitment, leadership, personal integrity and unselfish devotion to his country. He was an American patriot in the finest sense of the word; he believed in freedom and the American way of life and was willing to defend them at his own peril. Otherwise, he couldn’t have done the often-dangerous work that he did.

From early childhood, Richard Eaton, who was known as Rick, had a fascination with being a soldier. There was an extensive and colorful family history of military service on both sides of his family going back generations. One of his ancestors, William Eaton, was a U.S. Army officer who led a daring rescue mission to free American hostages in Tripoli, Libya in 1804 during the Barbary Wars. General Amos Bebee Eaton, a graduate of West Point in 1826, served in the Civil War. Both of his grandfathers were military veterans; one was a cavalry officer in World War I and Grandfather Noble, on his mother’s side, was a pilot in World War II. These had a profound effect on the young boy who grew up hearing these family stories of military adventures.

According to his mother, Sharon Eaton, Rick was a voracious reader, especially books about historical figures who had made a positive difference in the world. One of his heroes was the aviator MG Claire Lee Chennault, founder of “The Flying Tigers” in WWII. He also loved books about spies. Friends called him “G.I. Joe.”

Although he indulged his parents and toured colleges when he was in high school, he had already made up his mind to join the Army, even going so far as to bring the local recruiter home to meet his parents. In a recent interview, his mother remembered finding the MOS list of occupational designations available to enlistees hidden under his bed. After studying it Eaton had concluded that only in the field of counterintelligence (CI) would he be in a position to make a difference and really save lives. Despite an offer to attend West Point, he declined. “He was sick of studying; he was adventurous and wanted to go out into the world and do things. Rick couldn’t imagine himself sitting at a desk”, she said. His test scores were the highest ever recorded. According to the recruiter, the Army “could give him the best work that the military had to offer.” It was a perfect match; the Army wanted Rick and more than anything else, Rick wanted the Army!

Eaton enlisted at 19 and thus began the extraordinary career that was the fulfillment of his dreams. He served a total of eighteen years in the U.S. Military; 12 years on active duty and six in the Reserves. Because of the 50% reduction in CI agents worldwide which President Clinton had ordered in 1998, Eaton left the Army voluntarily, joining the reserve unit at Fort George Mead, MD.  He loved being in the military. Leaving active-duty was “the saddest day of my life,” he said later.

Richard’s counterintelligence career took him to political hot-spots on extended assignments in many parts of the world. He became fluent in Korean, Spanish and Arabic and also published several books about counterintelligence for the military intelligence community.

Because of the highly secretive nature of his work, out of necessity he kept the details of what he did to himself. He kept his private life completely separate from his military life, his mother explained. “He lived in two worlds, his military world and his friends and family word.”

In his private life Richard was a loving son with a wry sense of humor who made his parents proud. As a youth he loved to play European Soccer and even coached a soccer team while he was in Honduras. He was a ‘straight shooter’ who made friends easily wherever he went and knew how to relax and have fun. His mother noted that although Rick never married, “beautiful women were attracted to him.”

In his work he was all business, a consummate professional, and never discussed his work with others. He would not wear his uniform at home and actual pictures of him are rare. “He loved his missions and loved being where history was happening.”  When the mission was successfully completed and it became public knowledge, only then was it safe to talk about it. “CI special agents rarely receive public recognition. They work silently in the shadows worldwide”, Sharon noted.

Eaton was involved in the evacuation of President Ferdinan Marcos and his entourage from the Philippines after he was deposed in 1986. Marcos was in poor health, reportedly suffering from Lupus. Richard was personally assigned to Marcos during his frequent flights back to the United States for medical treatment during his political exile.

During the U.S. invasion of Panama in December,1989 Eaton was on the team escorting Panamanian senators and their families to Miami. Sharon recalls him calling from the airport and telling his parents that “these would be the last two planes departing from Panama. He could see paratroopers in the sky. I think I’ll make it home for Christmas”, he told them.

Rick did extensive contract work while he was in the reserves. At one point he was working at the Pentagon doing contract work for the intelligence community.  He narrowly escaped death on 9/11 because the office he was working in was undergoing renovations and he was not in the building that day.

Rick was living in South Korea and working for the U.S. Air Force at Kunsan Air Base in the Republic of Korea in 2002. He was happy there, but when Operation Iraqi Freedom was mobilizing in 2003, he gave it up because “He wanted to go in. There was no way he wasn’t going”, Sharon says. He volunteered and was assigned to B Company, 323 Military Intelligence Battalion and deployed to Iraq. He was attached to 3d Squadron, 3d Armored Calvary Regiment (3/3 ACR) out of Fort Carlson, CO. while he was there. It was to be Richard Eaton’s last counterintelligence mission.

Rick’s assignment was to lead a tactical Human Intelligence (HUMINT) team which reported to the S2, 3/3 ACR. It was a dangerous job in a now very dangerous country, especially in the area of the “Sunni Triangle” where his team was operating. Saddam Hussein, his military generals and Ba’ath party members were on the run, but the party still had cells of influence in small villages and neighborhoods throughout the country. American and coalition forces were being targeted daily by insurgents using rocket propelled grenades, and deadly IED’s in surprise attacks. A deck of picture cards had been issued to U.S. forces to aid them in identifying Hussein loyalists in order to kill or capture them. Rick’s team had already found some of them. This was the chaotic hornet’s nest into which he had voluntarily entered.

The squadron was in the process of setting up a rudimentary base in Ar-Ramadi out of the remains of a ransacked former Republican Guard Base. The doors had been stolen, the windows blown out; there were no hot showers. A pit generator was being installed for electricity. There was no hospital, only a medical tent that had air-conditioning. The heat was suffocating, often soaring to 120 degrees. This was to be Richard’s new base. According to his mother, except for the night he died, Rick always slept in his Humvee to avoid the sand fleas, scorpions, bats and their guano in the barracks. His previous base had been in Al-Hit, northwest of Ar-Ramadi operating with the 94^th Military Police (94^th MP) of Sacco, ME. which provided his security. It was in Al-Hit on August 9,2003 that a chain of events began that ultimately took the life of Rick Eaton.

Some details are still unknown. On that day, two American soldiers had been visiting a police station under the control of Iraqi police forces in Al-Hit for a meeting. Because the relocation by the 3/3 ACR to the base at Ar-Ramadi was new, it is likely that the 94^th was still located in Al-Hit.  When the soldiers came out of the police station they came under attack from insurgents lobbing Russian grenades at them and firing down on the station from a building across the street. It was a set-up. After hearing about the incident underway, Eaton responded, likely from Ar-Ramadi and probably with another member of his HUMINT team. When they arrived, the 94^th MP unit was already fully engaged and the action had escalated into a ferocious firefight. IED’s had been planted in the road. From a mosque up the street, insurgents were coming and going with weapons. Rick and other soldiers were in and out of the building by the police station trying to clear out the rooms and secure it. It was chaos in oppressive 110-degree temperatures. At one point his mother states that Rick rescued Sgt. Christpher Henry of the 94^th MP who’d collapsed from the heat, pulling him out of the line of fire. He credits Rick with saving his life. The furious firefight continued all day until it ended that evening at which time Richard went back to Ar-Ramadi. Certainly, he must have been utterly exhausted; but reports of the incident needed to be filed, so he worked further into the night - again sleeping in his Humvee. There were no injuries or deaths of U.S. soldiers-except from the heat.

The next morning Eaton collapsed at the Ar-Ramadi base gate where he’d gone to meet an informant. It was at the beginning of the war in Iraq and medical protocols for heat exhaustion had yet to be firmly established. His parents were told that he was treated for heat exhaustion and given 3 bags of saline solution for re-hydration in the air-conditioned medical tent over a period of about 7 hours. In an email Sharon stated that afterward Rick “was released in the care of a soldier in his HUMIT team to the barracks building who checked on him around midnight and again in the early morning.” But in spite of the re-hydration, Richard died in his barracks sometime after 12:00 AM on August 11, 2003 in Ar-Ramadi, Iraq.

What exactly had caused his death? Was it simply “Accident: Heat related Death” as the Army concluded at the time? Sharon and her late husband wondered for years. They wanted some good to come out of Rick’s sacrifice and eventually it did.

Around 2008, based on further tests and an investigation by Navy Captain Craig Mallak, then the chief medical examiner and mortuary director at Dover Air Force base in Delaware, he concluded that Rick Eaton had in all likelihood died from a medical condition called Exertional Rhabdomyolysis, a life-threatening condition often associated with arduous exercise under extreme conditions causing muscles to breakdown and release toxins into the bloodstream and the kidneys. Unfortunately, in theater the onset of its symptoms had obviously gone undiagnosed. Because of body decomposition in the heat there was no blood to test, which is the defining medical test; therefore, his official Army death certificate has never been altered. Complicating things was the fact that another soldier’s records had mistakenly been put in Rick’s file. However, using urine samples which had been preserved, Mallak was confident in his conclusion when he personally met with Sharon. As a result, led by Captain Mallak, new protocols were established for military autopsies and the preservation of bodily samples, especially in theater and in high heat environments, as well as new observation procedures for patients after medical treatment. Despite losing her only child, Sharon does not view Rick’s death as incompetence or negligence but rather what happened in wartime medical care in Iraq.

In 2024 the U.S. Army Reserve center at Fort Belvoir, VA., was renamed in Rick’s honor in an official memorialization ceremony attended by his mother. A large bronze plaque bearing his likeness was unveiled at the ceremony. Officially known as the 99^th Readiness Division and Military Intelligence Readiness Command, MIRC, it is the very building in which Eaton did some of his training years earlier and in which military intelligence training is still conducted for reservists today.

Rick Eaton lived a complicated life. Because of his secretive work, different people saw different sides of him. An online message board in his honor is still filled with postings from colleagues more than 20 years after his death. A counterintelligence colleague who knew him well remembers him as “a voice of reason” with a mocking sense of humor about stuffy ceremonies involving “big shots.” For many he was a mentor and teacher, to others a ‘brother’ and a friend. And to another, it was Rick who saved his life. To all he was a peerless CI agent who was universally respected and admired. One posting summed it up - “He enjoyed all life had to give.”

Destiny led Rick Eaton to become a soldier. It was all he ever wanted to do and he loved doing it. His late father once observed that his son “loved the military. He loved this country, and this was his life, and, in many respects, his identity.” When asked how she thought her son would want to be remembered his mother stated that it would be for his positive impact on Army intelligence. “As a soldier he was selfless, brave and always took care of his fellow soldiers”, she said.

Rick Eaton surely lived the life of adventure he had always craved. It was his lifeblood. He wanted to make a difference and save lives and that is exactly what he did.  Although he never sought to be a hero, he was indeed, much like those he admired as a child. Perhaps the best tribute to Rick Eaton is simply ‘He was a soldier’s soldier.’

Richard S. Eaton is buried in the Eaton family plot in Grove Street Cemetery, New Haven, CT next to his father, Richard Eaton, Sr. and near his ancestor, Gen Amos Beebe Eaton.

Author’s note: Andrew Pedersen-Keel and Richard S. Eaton, both remarkable men, were the recipients of many citations and military decorations for their service and sacrifice, including the Bronze Star Medal.