FROM The St. Louis Post-Dispatch  http://www.stltoday.com
11/12/2003

Black Hawk helicopter pilot from Missouri dies in crash in Iraq 
By TIM O'NEIL 


He originally enlisted in the Army but was later accepted at West Point His wife also 
pilots choppers. 

Army Capt. Ben Smith, a northeast Missouri farm boy turned Black Hawk helicopter 
pilot, was glad to get a mission over Tikrit, Iraq, on Friday morning. 

"I'm flying around some big general today. That will be good for me to get out of the 
office for a day," he wrote in an e-mail to his family back home, shortly before he 
took off. 

Mary Sims, one of his sisters, said the next word they received was from an Army officer, 
who stepped out of a van Friday afternoon at their parents' farm near Indian Creek, just 
south of Monroe City, Mo. 

"We had all heard on the news about a Black Hawk going down that morning and wondered if 
he could be him," Sims said Saturday. "As soon as dad saw the officer's uniform, he knew 
what it meant." 

Capt. Smith, 29, was one of six soldiers whose helicopter crashed Friday on an island in 
the Tigris River near Tikrit, hometown of Saddam Hussein. The Army said the crash was 
under investigation and that initial findings "discount the use of surface-to-air missiles 
as the cause." Officers in Tikrit were quoted as saying the helicopter may have been hit 
by a rocket-propelled grenade. 

The Army identified four of the six who were killed in the crash. Sims said Saturday that 
her brother told them the general was to have been in a second helicopter. 

Smith was the second of six children of Bill and Kathy Smith, whose farm is about 25 miles 
west of Hannibal. Ben Smith graduated from Monroe City High School in 1993 and entered the 
Army, initially to earn the college-tuition assistance. 

Two years later, he was accepted at U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He graduated as a 
second lieutenant in 1999 and entered flight school at Fort Rucker, Ala., where he learned 
to fly the Black Hawk. He was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division. 

"Ben has always been one to go for a challenge," Sims said by telephone from her home near 
Indian Creek. "He was very proud of his service and wanted to make a career of it. He told 
us that he believed in what we are doing over in Iraq. He once told mom that he knew he 
could be killed but that, if he died in the helicopter, he would be happy. 

"We've always been worried about him being over there, but you operate under the assumption 
that he'll be fine," she said. "He didn't want us to worry about that stuff." 

Sims said her brother took part in the invasion of Iraq in March and had been there since. 
He was to come home in four months. 

Smith and his wife, Maggie, were married in December. She also is a Black Hawk pilot on 
duty in Iraq, and Sims said the couple would see each other as often as they could. 

The Smiths are Catholics. Sims said their mother gave Capt. Smith a scapular, a religious 
item worn over the shoulders, and won his promise to wear it. 

"He e-mailed about three weeks ago that he'd lost it and asked for another one," she said. 
"He sent word later thanking mom for the second one. He wrote, 'I know I am once again protected.'" 

In addition to his wife, sister and parents, Capt. Smith is survived by two brothers, Sam 
Smith of Indian Creek and Leo Smith of Belton, Mo.; and two other sisters, Margie Wilcoxen 
of Grain Valley, Mo., and Sally Lemongelli of Indian Creek. 

Sims said a funeral Mass will be celebrated when it can be scheduled at St. Stephen's 
Catholic Church in Indian Creek. 

Reporter Tim O'Neil 
E-mail: toneil@post-dispatch.com 
Phone: 314-340-8132