Iraq air collision
kills isle soldiers

Two Wheeler aviators die and
two others are hurt as their
helicopters crash near Baghdad

Two Oahu-based soldiers died Saturday in Iraq in a helicopter crash that injured two others, military officials said yesterday.

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE Chief Warrant Officer William Brennan, 36, of Bethlehem, Conn., came to the 25th Division in July 2003.

Chief Warrant Officer William Brennan, 36, of Bethlehem, Conn., and Capt. Christopher B. Johnson, 29, of Excelsior Springs, Mo., were killed Saturday night at 8:30 p.m. when two OH-58D Kiowa helicopters collided and crashed southwest of Baghdad.

Both soldiers were assigned to the 25th Division's 1st Battalion, 25th Aviation Regiment, based at Wheeler Army Airfield, and were members of Task Force Baghdad.

Johnson was commander of Charlie Company and had been assigned to the 25th Infantry Division in October 2003. Brennan has been with the 25th Division since July 2003. The Army said two other soldiers were injured, but did not identify them.

Twenty-two soldiers and one civilian with Hawaii ties have died in the wars -- 17 in Iraq and six in Afghanistan. The two deaths brought to 1,088 the number of U.S. troops killed since the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003.

The U.S. military also has lost at least 27 helicopters in Iraq since May 2003, many of them to hostile fire, according to figures compiled by the Brookings Institution.

Brennan and Johnson became the fifth and sixth soldiers with Hawaii ties to die in helicopter crashes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Several other isle-based soldiers have been injured in helicopter accidents.

Brennan, who sometimes went as "Will," was the youngest of seven children born to a family that is well known in the Bethlehem area for running the Curtis House, a Colonial-era inn and restaurant in nearby Woodbury.

He and his wife, Kathy, with whom he served in the Army in Bosnia, have two daughters, Katelyn, 4, and Cassidy, 2.

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE Capt. Christopher Johnson, 29, of Excelsior Springs, Mo., joined the 25th Division in October 2003.

Brennan's siblings remember him as fun-loving. He liked to ride his bicycle with the family cat, Ralph, on his head. He took care of goats for a 4-H project and played lacrosse.

He graduated from Roman Catholic schools in the Waterbury area, then studied at a community college, but a pilot's life was his dream, said his brother, Nicholas.

"He just wanted to fly," he said.

William Brennan joined the National Guard and Reserves and applied to Army flight school. He almost never made it -- an Army bureaucrat spilled coffee on his first application and threw it away.

In an Easter letter to his sister, Briana Wall, Brennan spoke more privately of his fears, but he wanted to keep these feelings secret from his wife so she would not worry, his sister said.

"I say a hell of a lot of prayers before getting into the aircraft and after getting down," he wrote. "It is not the fear of death that weighs me down, it is the feeling of not being there for my three girls."

"There is a very real chance that something bad could happen and they would never know me," he wrote.

Brennan met his wife at a Super Bowl party, his brother recalled. Kathy Brennan was in the infantry. They were both stationed at Fort Drum and shipped out together for Bosnia. While overseas, she learned she was pregnant with their first daughter and was discharged.

Brennan will be buried in Connecticut.

No information on Johnson was immediately available last night.