LYNNWOOD – With a simple phone call, bomb blasts in Baghdad were felt in Lynnwood.
Chris Goodenow / The Enterprise
Former U.S. Marine Chris Purdy, now a bodyguard for the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, Iraq, was on leave in his hometown of Lynnwood on Oct. 14 when four of his team members were killed by suicide bombers in Baghdad.
Chris Purdy of Lynnwood is a former U.S. Marine who is now a private bodyguard for U.S. Ambassador James Jeffrey in Iraq.
Purdy was having coffee with his father while home on leave when the call came saying that some of his co-workers had died Thursday in the first successful attack inside Baghdad’s highly protected “Green Zone.”
The phone call came from Tyler Johnson of Monroe, an ex-Marine who met Purdy while both were stationed in Japan.
For Purdy, the loss of friends came with the realization that he would likely have been with them if he hadn’t returned home for a wedding.
“Al-Qaida was always something we heard and knew about, but now it’s personal,” Purdy said.
Iraq’s most-feared terror group, led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Purdy said he can’t believe it happened to his team, employees of the U.S. security firm DynCorp.
“We are one of the best security teams in Iraq, and our team hasn’t been directly attacked before,” he said, adding that many team members have years of special forces and other elite military experience.
What happened, Purdy said, couldn’t have been prevented.
“These insurgents are cowards, killing innocent civilians who are shopping or having coffee,” he said.
The dead include his team captain, John Pinsonneault, 39, of North Branch, Minn.; Steve Osborne, 40, of Kennesaw, Ga.; Eric Miner, 44, of South Windham, Conn.; and Ferdinand Ibaboa, 36, of Mesa, Ariz.
Pinsonneault had e-mailed Purdy the night before telling him to have a good time at home.
“We all have such a tight bond of a relationship every day together in this dangerous environment. I know everything about them, and they know everything about me,” Purdy said.
Without revealing details, he describes his job as “like a secret service in a war zone.” Purdy said that while residents in the Green Zone regularly hear and feel explosions outside the area, he felt fairly safe.
The four-square-mile Green Zone is heavily fortified and known as “Little America,” he said. The area is in a district of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces in a bend of the Tigris river, and now houses many of those involved in the administration of Iraq.
The area has green lawns, restaurants, American television and cafes, and an open-air market. The market is where Purdy’s buddies were spending some off-duty time, buying souvenirs for their families, when insurgents penetrated the area and detonated explosives.
His team had about 15 men. Now Purdy, the youngest member at 23, will have to train new members when he returns later this week.
“How is my team ever going to be normal again? We’re not,” said Purdy, a 1999 graduate of Meadowdale High School.
His mother, Alice Purdy, runs a child care center out of her Lynnwood home and is a longtime member of the Lynnwood Police Department’s volunteer organization Citizens Patrol.
“Him being safe here at home during this tragic incident shows God’s hand protecting him,” she said. “My heart goes out to all the families of the men from DynCorp who were lost. Also to all the military families who have lost someone.”
Chris Purdy said he’s not a real “politics guy” but knows how he feels about the Nov. 2 presidential election.
“Bush has always been strong in his stance. Just about everyone there supports Bush, and so do I,” he said.
His feelings about the way the war is being portrayed is the reason why Purdy decided to go return to Iraq after an honorable discharge in 2003.
After starting work on a degree in international relations at Edmonds Community College, Purdy said: “I couldn’t stand what people were saying here about what was going on over there. I knew in my heart what was going on. I was there, they didn’t know.”
When he heard about the DynCorp job, he decided his experience was the perfect fit.
Purdy said things have improved since June when he arrived in Baghdad, and after Iraqis were granted sovereignty, a ceremony he attended.
“The American people don’t see it, but the country is headed in the right direction,” he said, adding that he blames the media for spinning the news that way.
Purdy said his focus and mission are clear as he prepares to return to a place so different than when he left it just a week ago.
“We don’t worry about ourselves, just the mission and taking care of each other so we can come home to our families again,” Purdy said.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
Enterprise reporter Shannon Sessions: 425-673-6531 or sessions@heraldnet.com.
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