PERU — Early Wednesday morning, grieving widow Chelsea McLain and her mother arranged colorful flowers on a downtown lamppost in Rumford, beneath the shield bearing the name of Chelsea’s husband, Buddy McLain.

McLain, 24, was one of six soldiers killed when they were ambushed Monday by an Afghan Border Police officer, according to his family in Peru and news reports from Afghanistan.

Just a week before his death, he had shared with Chelsea his misgivings about American soldiers training Afghan Border Police. He told her he was going on a dangerous mission.

“He said he didn’t think it was right to train these people and give them guns,” Chelsea McLain said of her husband, who wanted to become a Maine police officer when he was honorably discharged from the Army.

Buddy McLain was a cavalry scout with the U.S. Army’s 2nd Squadron, 61st Cavalry, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, deployed from Fort Campbell, Ky., to Afghanistan on Aug. 24, 2010 — his son Owen’s first birthday.

“Buddy was so proud of his shield hanging on Congress Street,” Chelsea’s mother, Brenda Freeman, said Wednesday. “Buddy wanted to come home a hero. He was pretty proud of that uniform.”

Chelsea was alone with 15-month-old Owen at the Freeman house on Monday when a white van turned into the driveway, said her father, Andrew Freeman.

“I thought it was the Jehovah’s Witnesses and I was going to tell them that I’d already found God,” Chelsea said.

But when she opened the door and saw men in uniform, she said her most awful fear was realized — her high school sweetheart from Mountain Valley High School, whom she’d known for four years and five months and whom she’d wed on March 11, 2009, was dead.

Distraught, Chelsea called her mother, who was at work in the Long Log Division at NewPage Corp., Rumford’s paper mill.

Brenda contacted Chelsea’s aunt, Jolene Norris, who lives nearby in Peru, and Andrew, who is employed by Technical Construction of Turner and was building a bridge on the Maine Turnpike in Sabattus.

“When I got there, I grabbed Chelsea and hugged her and the officers told us that Buddy died of multiple gunshots in an ambush,” Norris said.

According to a report in The New York Times on Tuesday, the shooter was an Afghan national who had been a member of the border police since 2008. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the slayings, saying the officer was a sleeper agent planted by them to kill NATO soldiers.

Afghan officers gave a different account, saying they believe the incident may have been an accident. The officer involved had been in an argument with his father earlier in the day about an arranged marriage to an underage girl that the officer was opposed to. An Afghan general was quoted as saying the officer involved had a good track record and had “been a good boy.”

The incident occurred in the eastern province of Nangarhar, close to the Pakistan border.

McLain and the other American soldiers who were killed had gone to the remote site for mortar practice, according to the The New York Times report.

The Americans were not suspicious, likely because the shooter was a familiar face, an Afghan general told the newspaper.

“What happened next is not entirely clear, said a senior border police official who described two versions. In one, the Americans were alone at the site; in the other, there were other American soldiers and Afghan National Army soldiers and border police officers nearby,” the report stated.

Andrew Freeman said the Army did not provide additional details about the incident and said a full military report on what happened Monday would not likely be made available — even to McLain’s family — for several months.

“The sad part of this is that he never had a chance to defend himself,” Andrew Freeman said. “If he’d had a fighting chance, I would have felt better, but knowing Buddy, he was a trusting guy and I think he never saw it coming.”

Buddy wanted to serve on the front lines. It was dangerous work. Three days after he arrived, his commanding officer was killed.

About a month before Buddy’s death, a suicide bomber tried to take out the Humvee he was riding in, pockmarking it with shrapnel from the explosives, Andrew Freeman said.

He said the family won’t get Buddy’s body back for seven to 10 days, because the Army must first positively identify it and prepare it for burial.

On Wednesday, Buddy’s parents traveled to Dover, Del., for a 15-minute military ceremony for their son, whose body was to arrive by direct flight by mid-afternoon.

Buddy McLain entered the Army in May 2009 to make a better life for himself and Chelsea, having lost his job of three or four years as a roofer for Patrick Hamner of Hamner and Nails construction company. The job ended when Hamner unexpectedly passed away, Andrew Freeman said.

On Tuesday, the Freemans bought a burial plot near Hamner’s in Demerritt Cemetery in Peru, where Buddy will be buried following a service at Mountain Valley High School tentatively set for Saturday, Dec. 11 or Dec. 18.

The Freemans said they can’t make plans until the Army releases Buddy’s body to Arthur Meader of Meader’s Funeral Home in Rumford.

Chelsea said her husband first met their 3-week-old son in Auburn on Sept. 18, 2009, the day after he graduated from boot camp.

He would spend only 20 days with Owen before he was killed, Chelsea said.

On Wednesday evening while the Rev. John Gensel was getting acquainted with the family for whom he would soon conduct a funeral service, Owen wandered around the kitchen, saying, “Da-da, da-da.”

When Owen saw a photograph of his dad on the television on Tuesday evening, Brenda Freeman said the toddler walked to the TV and patted Buddy’s face, saying “Da-da, da-da.”

“It kind of set us back a bit,” she said.

Andrew Freeman said the family is coping as best it can and he thanked a continued outpouring of community support.

“Today’s better than yesterday,” he said, “but Chelsea’s just devastated. It’s a lot to deal with, being 20 years old, a widow, and having a son.”

“It was kind of a shock to the whole River Valley community and we understand that it is a community loss,” Andrew Freeman said. “It’s a private thing, but you want to share because there are a lot of people grieving right now.”

“And I hadn’t even thought of it yet, but Chelsea said, ‘Mom, there’s five more families going through what we’re going through,’” Brenda Freeman said.

tkarkos@sunjournal.com

Copy the Story Link