After two decades in the Marines, Grady Kurpasi was living with his wife and 13-year-old daughter. But Putin’s invasion of Ukraine stirred something. It gave him purpose. It allowed him to be Capt. Kurpasi again.
“The Russians were committing war crimes against the civilians,” he wrote in an email to George Heath, a former Marine colleague and friend. He’d already written about the mass graves in Bucha and how Russian troops were torturing and killing civilians. “Pretty bad stuff. I’m glad to be part of the force that is stopping this.” He ended the email withKurpasi retired from the Marines in 2021 to spend more time with his wife, Heeson, and daughter, Katie.
Before going to Iraq, Kurpasi wasn’t sure if he saw a career for himself in the Marines. But when he got home, he told Heeson he felt like he’d be leaving something unfinished. Every time he was close to his reenlistment date, he decided to stay. KURPASI RETIRED FROM the Marine Corps in September 2021, and soon learned that his plans to study at Stanford were dashed. For two decades, Kurpasi saw a Marine in the mirror every morning, but now Capt. Kurpasi was just“There’s a real loss of purpose in life a lot of times,” Turner says. “It’s real hard to put your finger on what difference you make anymore — because you know that you used to make significant differences in numerous lives.
“I think I took it very lightly because he made it through terrible deployments,” she says. “I thought he’s going to sit in the back and just do the advising position.” But Kurpasi was concerned about the leadership in the legion. He told Heath in an early-April email that it seemed like they were taking anyone they could get their hands on, and he wrote about another team leader who was accidentally shot during training. Kurpasi had concerns, too, about how the Ukrainians planned operations, which he talked to Olvera about.
In an email sent a week before the ambush, things seemed to be turning around for Kurpasi. “I’m a Lt Again! I am now officially a [platoon] commander,” he wrote. “Have been running some missions no one else is interested in, also have one of the only teams that isn’t imploding/disintegrating .” Their second day there, Kurpasi approached Hill about finding the location of a Russian mortar that had been firing at a nearby Ukrainian unit. Kurpasi and Hill were determined to avenge the death of Sibley, who had been part of the Raven team. Around midmorning, clutching Cz Bren 2 rifles, Kurpasi and Hill patrolled through a thick tree line next to the road. Kurpasi wore a helmet and plate carrier, with a yellow shirt and cargo pants. Hill was in green camouflage fatigues.
On April 27, Heath, unaware of the firefight, tried emailing Kurpasi: “Hey brother haven’t heard from you in a week. Hope all is still going well, let me know if you need anything else.… Stay low.”Legion members began mailing Kurpasi’s gear back to Wilmington. But Heeson didn’t believe he was dead. She reached out to Heath and Turner to ask for help finding him.
American media didn’t know about Kurpasi being lost in action until June — two months after he had gone missing — whenpublished a story about the search. New tips started coming in. An International Legion sniper said Kurpasi was in Russian custody. Then, Heeson got a similar message. So did Josh, an independent intelligence analyst who was helping coordinate demining efforts. He had been searching for Kurpasi since June. They just needed to find him.
“That’s what sparked my interest,” Aces says. “Grady being Grady, [he] could easily look and sound like a North Korean if he was still alive. But the report didn’t make sense because it said the dude’s face was blasted off. He wouldn’t be able to talk. Did they mistake Grady for a North Korean soldier? And maybe they’re just trying to keep him alive. Which didn’t meet the narrative that we were reading, where they were just cutting people’s heads off.
At the end of September, Heath set up a video call with Hill. What happened after the ambush started to come into focus. Hill explained that as a Russian soldier put a tourniquet on his arm, he glanced at Kurpasi lying nearby. The Russian soldiers flipped Kurpasi on his back and then back on his stomach. But they didn’t seem to check if he was alive or dead. The Russians told Hill his whole team was killed. But Hill learned later that Feldcamp, the German fighter, had survived.
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