Kyle Wehrly’s highway is dedicated Friday. The man in the seat behind him tells what happened. | WGIL 93.7 FM

Kyle Wehrly was the best navigator in his unit, and it wasn’t close. Crossing the Iraqi desert at night meant switching constantly between night vision goggles and a GPS screen you can’t use with the goggles on, over ground with no landmarks to steer by.

“He did it flawlessly,” said Chuck Newton, his platoon sergeant. “He could get us where we’re going every time.”

On Nov. 3, 2005, Wehrly was navigating the lead Humvee of a 30-vehicle convoy hunting a bomb maker outside Camp Ashraf. Newton was in the seat behind him, watching the tracker so Wehrly could keep his eyes forward. They were talking when the truck hit the IED.

Sgt. 1st Class Kyle B. Wehrly died at a hospital hours later. He was 28, a husband, and the father of a young daughter.

Nearly 21 years later, at 2 p.m. Friday on the Galesburg Public Square, the stretch of Route 150 running through Wehrly’s hometown will be dedicated in his name.

Dan Swanson and Chuck Newton joined Galesburg’s Morning News on Thursday, Sept. 3. Listen to the full interview below.

 

The signs went up Wednesday. One sits at the northwest end near Lake Storey; the other is on the east side, at the bottom of the hill past the bridge. The designation covers Route 150 from city limit to city limit.

‘He wasn’t that guy’

Wehrly joined the Illinois Army National Guard in 1995, while he was still a student at Galesburg High School. Newton joined in 1993, and the two spent most of their careers competing against each other.

“He was very competitive, and he liked to talk a lot of crap, but at the end he would come over and say, ‘Hey, good job,’” Newton said. “When you showed up to those things, you look over there and be like, ‘Kyle’s here. All right, I got to get my stuff together, because he’s going to bring his A-game.’”

State Rep. Dan Swanson knew him too. When Swanson was a battalion commander, Wehrly was his top gun.

In the weeks before the unit deployed, Wehrly collapsed while refereeing a soccer game. Then he got sick again at Fort Dix, New Jersey, walking off the night fire range and telling Newton he didn’t feel good before collapsing in his arms. Newton carried him to a building, where medics started IVs and got him to a hospital.

“First thing he said to me when I got there that night was, ‘You’re not going without me,’” Newton said. “I said, ‘Well, I can’t take you like this. You got to get better.’”

Janet Wehrly, Kyle’s wife, is a registered nurse. She got on the phone with the doctors and nurses at Fort Dix. Four days later Kyle was back on his feet, and he deployed with his unit.

He had hidden his medical problems to make it through the pre-deployment screening. “He could have just said, ‘Hey, I physically can’t do it, I need to stay home.’ And they would have let him stay home,” Newton said. “But he wasn’t that guy. He wasn’t that leader. He wasn’t the guy that’s going to send his guys into harm’s way without him.”

Camp Ashraf

Wehrly and Newton were stationed at Camp Ashraf, on Highway 2 in Iraq. Newton was a platoon sergeant; Wehrly was a squad leader.

The base had an unusual mission, Newton said. It had been an Iranian compound, home to members of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, whom he said Saddam Hussein had used to do his dirty work. When U.S. forces came north on Highway 2 in 2003, according to Newton, they turned themselves over to the Americans in exchange for protection. They had nowhere else to go, he said: the tribes in Iraq wanted nothing to do with them, and they couldn’t return to Iran.

American forces confined the Iranians to the base, took their weapons and gear, and posted guards around it, Newton said. His unit ran the checkpoints and escorted the residents anywhere they needed to go, including down to the Tigris River to work on the pump station that kept their water running.

The unit hauled in its own food and water, ran convoy security and area security, and lived beside a bunker complex packed with old ordnance that contractors detonated daily. “They’d do a 10-ton blast every day, and it’d shake the windows in every building on the base,” Newton said.

The road north of the base had a nickname: IED Alley. “There was hardly any road left because there was so many IEDs planted on it,” Newton said.

Nov. 3, 2005

A bomb maker had been operating around the base for months, Newton said. He had killed civilian contractors who ran over an IED in a pickup outside the back gate, and later a military police officer working area security nearby. Intelligence kept coming in, and kept not panning out.

Then, Newton said, the battalion intelligence section reported they had located him.

The unit was three weeks from going home. “It’s kind of taboo to go on missions like that right before you’re getting ready to come home,” Newton said. They went anyway.

The convoy rolled out around 1 a.m., about 30 vehicles headed for a remote village. Wehrly navigated the lead Humvee. Newton was in the back seat, watching the tracker, leading the breach team.

They were talking when the truck hit the IED.

Newton was knocked unconscious. He came to hearing the driver, Tim Frainer, screaming that he couldn’t find the gunner. The explosion had stood the truck on end, and when it slammed down it threw the gunner, Spc. Robert Hendrickson, about 40 yards into the desert. He survived, banged up. Frainer took shrapnel that went through the transmission and into his leg, but he kept the leg.

Wehrly was outside the truck. When Newton climbed out, he stepped into the crater the bomb had left, about four feet deep, wire still in it.

“We literally got blown up by two D-cell batteries and some wire, because that’s all there was,” Newton said.

Medics stabilized Wehrly. Newton found Corey Wise, who commanded the unit and will serve as master of ceremonies Friday, and set up security while they called for a medevac. Wise asked Newton what he wanted to do.

“I said I want to go with my guys,” Newton said.

At the hospital, doctors found shrapnel had entered Wehrly’s head. There was nothing they could do. He was taken off life support and died a few minutes later.

“One of the hardest days of my life,” Newton said, choking back tears.

The form he found at work

Newton spent two decades looking for a way to put Wehrly’s name on something permanent. He found it on his own work computer.

Newton works for the Illinois Department of Transportation. He was clicking through forms one day, looking for something unrelated, when he came across one labeled Highways for Heroes.

“I’ve been looking for that form for the last 20 years,” he said.

He filled it out, called Swanson, and told him Janet Wehrly would be sending it over. Swanson carried it to Springfield, and Newton said the effort picked up traction almost immediately.

‘Kyle’ the howitzer

The field artillery unit in Galesburg still fires towed artillery. They have named one of their 155 mm howitzers Kyle, and they fire it every year at annual training.

“That’s great, because Kyle liked to shoot stuff,” Newton said. “He was a gun chief, and he was in his height of glory whenever we were putting rounds down range.”

The howitzer will be on the Public Square Friday, with the unit guidon beside it.

Newton and the men who served with Wehrly wear bracelets with his name on them. “It helps that his name is going to be remembered,” he said. “That’s been all of me and all of our guys, our philosophy.”

Friday’s ceremony

The 144th Army Band performs starting at 1:30 p.m., with the ceremony beginning at 2. Retired Col. Corey Wise is master of ceremonies. Scheduled speakers include Brig. Gen. Lenny Williams, assistant adjutant general of the Illinois Army National Guard; Lt. Col. Jeremy Miles, who served with Wehrly; State Sen. Mike Halpin; Swanson; and Mayor Peter Schwartzman. The Rev. Peter Wehrly, Kyle’s father, will deliver the invocation and benediction.

The ceremony will close with a presentation of ceremonial signs and flowers to the Wehrly family and the singing of the Army song.

Swanson said the response from people wanting to take part came immediately. “All it took was just mentioning we’re going to do a Sgt. 1st Class Wehrly dedication, and people said, ‘I want to be a part of it,’” he said. The first meeting was Janet Wehrly; Kyle’s mother, Nita Cross; Newton; and Swanson, kicking around ideas and making phone calls.

The event will be held on the west side of the Carl Sandburg monument. Swanson asked that people bring lawn chairs, since seating will be reserved for family and special guests, and said water will be available because of the expected heat. Galesburg Police will close Broad Street around the square. The city’s fire department, ambulance service and public works have all been involved in planning. Norris Sound and Lighting is providing the sound system at no charge.

Swanson had one more request. “There are going to be several soldiers in uniform there,” he said. “Please step up and tell them all thank you for their service.”

In case of rain, the ceremony moves to the National Guard facility on Linwood Road.