Los Angeles – Eighteen days after enduring an incorrect report that her son had been killed in Iraq, Theresa Anzack said Tuesday that he may be among three soldiers feared captured by insurgents Saturday.
Trying not to cry, Anzack said, “Now he’s missing for real. … I’m praying like I’ve never prayed before.”
Pfc. Joseph J. Anzack, 20, an Army gunner stationed south of Baghdad, was reported dead in late April. Word of his death was even posted on a sign outside his former school, South High School in Torrance.
But Anzack himself dispelled the rumor with a phone call home to say: “I’m still kicking.”
On Sunday, when his mother noticed her daughter and several close friends and relatives entering the store where she was working, “I thought they were dropping by to wish me a happy Mother’s Day,” she said.
“They said, ‘Theresa, Joseph’s missing,’ ” she recalled during a hastily arranged news conference at a park near her home.
“I went crazy. I said, ‘No. No. No.”‘
The somber news was conveyed to family members by Army representatives. Two military officials, including an Army chaplain, were staying at a nearby hotel Tuesday while an intensive search continues in Iraq.
“They call us each day or come by the house,” Anzack said. “There’s not much we can do but wait, which is the hardest thing in the world to do.
“I’m trying to stay positive,” she said, “but it’s really hard. I feel powerless, helpless and little bit insane.”
Search pressed
Leaflets seeking information about the three missing soldiers were dropped from U.S. aircraft in Iraq as nearly 4,000 troops searched for the trio Wednesday.
Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of U.S. troops south of Baghdad, said the U.S. was offering rewards of up to $200,000 for information on the soldiers’ whereabouts. “We’ve done so much as to drain canals after a report that the bodies were in a canal,” Lynch told The Associated Press. “So we’re leaving no stone unturned.”
Evidence indicated the attackers used hand grenades and other hand-held explosives and converged from several directions, he said. There were also indications that the U.S. soldiers fought back, he said.
