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Lieutenant’s military path included ‘band of brothers’
An oak tree grows in the front yard of Jill and Riley Bock, planted at their New Madrid (Missouri) property when Jill was pregnant with her son, Amos Camden Riley Bock.
Twenty-four years later, somewhere near Baghdad, Camden would fall in service to his country.
Since then, the oak has grown in size and splendor. Stretching toward the sun. The once scrawny tree now dominates the yard.
“I think of him every time I look at it,” Riley Bock said.
“Lt. Amos Bock” to those in his command, the young man will forever remain “Camden” to his parents.
After graduating West Point in 2004, Camden Bock was called into the Iraq conflict, where he found himself waging unconventional war against an atypical foe.
Sometimes called the “lieutenants’ war,” operations in Iraq were defined by platoons, small military units. Iraq was not a conflict that rested on the massive landings that defined previous wars.
The nature of counterinsurgency, opposed to conventional “force on force” conflicts, called for unusual precision. Instead of carpet-bombing and mass annihilation, objectives centered around direct engagement with the native populace, to win their hearts and minds and separate them from insurgents.
“Camden was a platoon leader and they called [the Iraq war] a ‘lieutenants’ war’ because, essentially, all of these patrols were platoon patrols. They weren’t company patrols. Almost all the work that was done over there was done by platoons, with lieutenants out in the field with them,” Riley Bock explained.
It’s what he was doing the day he was killed. On Oct 23, 2006, Camden Bock was in command, riding in the first vehicle in a convoy of military vehicles, “Humvees” in common parlance. In New Madrid, it was late afternoon. In Baghdad, the bomb exploded around midnight.
“Camden had gone out on patrol on what was called a ‘clear route,’” Riley Bock said.
The Humvees in Camden’s convoy had been outfitted with special armor to protect against just such an occurrence. The process, called “up-armoring,” added thick metal plates designed to resist the force of an IED (improvised explosive device).
The bomb encountered by Camden’s men, however, was not tinkered together in a cave or garage.
“It was actually made in Iran specifically for destroying American vehicles. It was designed specifically to penetrate the vehicle’s armor,” Riley Bock contended.
Three of the convoy’s four vehicles were destroyed in the explosion, with Camden Bock’s vehicle taking the worst of it.
The lieutenant’s gunner received serious injuries to his legs. Sitting on the same side of the Humvee as Camden, the lieutenant’s interpreter lost his life. The other occupants of the vehicle narrowly survived with serious shrapnel and concussion injuries. Occupants of the other two vehicles received relatively minor wounds.
At 6 a.m, halfway across the world, Jill Bock had already left for her job in Sikeston, Missouri, when Riley Bock heard a knock at the door. Turning on the porch light, he saw two uniformed men. As a teacher, he assumed the two individuals had come from the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC). It was the morning after his son’s death, and he had not yet heard the news.
A bet
Before the knock, before the bomb exploded in Baghdad, before Camden Bock entered artillery school and West Point, there was a Columbia, Missouri, bar, and a fateful bet. It happened in the fall of 1999, during his senior year at New Madrid County Central High School.
Known for its hamburgers, Booches is the oldest pool hall in Columbia. Although Camden Bock was too young to drink, his father was enjoying a beer in what had become a family ritual of burgers and beer before a football game.
Calvin Broughton served with Camden Bock in the National Guard. He was also a family friend of the Bocks, and spoke to the young man inside Booches.
“I bet I can get you into West Point,” he said.
“I bet you can’t,” replied Camden.
Before that, West Point was “not a lifelong goal” of his son, Riley Bock recalled.
“He took the bet. That set the road for him,” Riley Bock said.
After all, it was a bet Camden Bock was happy to lose.
Soon, the events of Sept. 11, 2001, would change everything. Camden Bock was redirected into the historic 101st Airborne “Screaming Eagles” Division. Again, it was an unexpected shift that played directly into the soldier’s secret hopes.
“It was where he wanted to go, anyway,” his father said.
Riley remembered his son as always having an interest in history, and reading at least one book about the historic “band of brothers,” a group of heroic soldiers commemorated in a 2001 HBO miniseries by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg.
During Camden Bock’s fateful senior year of high school, he went with his family to Normandy, France, personally visiting several sites where the 101st was engaged.
“He was interested in history and those things. That was the part of the trip where he was most interested,” his father recalled. “Then he ended up in the 4th Battalion, the same unit as what had been the band of brothers -- the 506. He went into a historic unit.”
It was a dream come true for Camden Bock and never something he felt forced into. He even made a point of avoiding the support and administrative parts of the military, favoring the combat arms instead.
“He thought that choice was important,” Riley Bock said.
Importance shone brightly in many of Camden Bock’s life choices.
Transformed by sacrifice, Camden Bock’s memory is a sanctuary for those honored to know him. To be without memory would be, fundamentally, to be without roots.
Weathering the wind and drinking the sun, a mighty oak still grows on the Bocks’ property.
“The tree is healthy,” Riley Bock said. “It should live a long, long time.”