Estimated reading time: 11 minutes
Forced to dig his own grave in Iraq, Fabrizio Quattrocchi answered his killers with one final act of raw defiance. This is a hard look at death, faith, courage, and the Italian who refused to die quietly.
Death, Faith, and the Question Fabrizio Quattrocchi Forces Us to Face
Today, we are going to talk about some pretty dark stuff. Death rightfully makes people uncomfortable. It is the innately unknowable nature of the thing that leaves folks so predictably discomfited. We all have theories. However, by definition, if somebody is talking about it, they’ve not yet actually given it a whirl themselves.
Any proper discussion of death touches upon issues of faith. As anyone who has read my work for more than a week will appreciate, I have strongly-held opinions on that subject. I am an unabashedly evangelical Christian. I wear Jesus on my sleeve. My faith informs everything about how I approach both my life and my inevitable demise.
My conclusions are drawn from some fairly extensive life experience. I have come face-to-face with my own mortality a couple of times and found peace waiting for me there. I have also attended a fair number of deaths professionally. Here are two representative examples.
Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes: Death in Trauma 1
Patient 1 was a gladiator. He rolled into the inner city ER where I worked, having been shot in the right chest some fifteen minutes earlier by a fellow thug armed with a .380ACP handgun. He was fit, muscular, and covered in gang tats. He was also coming absolutely unglued.
This desperate young man shouted, screamed, and flailed. It took five of us to restrain him long enough to get him situated on the bed in Trauma 1. And then the most amazing thing happened.
Over the next few minutes, his entire demeanor changed. He went from fighting us to begging us. “Please don’t let me die!” was a common refrain. And then he gradually acted like we weren’t even there.
As the blood steadily filled his chest, this horrified kid began praying with every fiber of his being. He shouted, “Please, Jesus, don’t let me die!” over and over and over. Then he arched his back, blood poured out of his mouth and nose, and he died. We did everything we could, but it all just happened too fast.
A Peace That Passes All Understanding: A Veteran’s Final Hours
I met Patient 2 in the VA. He was a Korean War veteran. In his prime, this man had been a hellraiser. He abused drugs, alcohol, and women at every opportunity. Then he found Jesus.
This gentleman was a Messianic Jew, and his Christian conversion changed absolutely everything about him. He walked away from alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs in an afternoon. Then he successfully resurrected his family. When I met him, he was dying of a squamous cell carcinoma of his sinuses that had metastasized to his lungs. The horrible treatments for his ghastly disease had stolen his sense of sight, smell, and taste, and rendered him nearly deaf. Now his lung mets were drowning him slowly, one drop at a time. Despite the horrors of this man’s sordid state, he was inexplicably happy. This guy was about to meet Jesus face to face, and he was like a kid on Christmas Eve.
I did the best I could to make him comfortable, but the poor man was both blind and dying. There were only so many options at my disposal. For a medicine man, these cases bring their own unique challenges.
On our second day together, he spontaneously took my arm and pulled me close. I assumed he wanted to tell me something or other that he needed. He then inexplicably pulled his oxygen mask off and immediately began turning blue. With his dying breath, this unimaginably miserable guy actually prayed for me.
He prayed for my family and me and my ministry in the hospital. He prayed that I might find the same peace and joy in Christ that he had found. This amazing dude prayed until he literally could no longer speak. As you might imagine, this experience moved me. I replaced his oxygen mask, thanked him sincerely, and left for home with quite a lot to think about.
The following morning, with my arm around his wife’s shoulders, I watched this extraordinary man die. I had known him all of three days. He met his end with dignity, peace, and hope. Attending his death was one of the most powerful experiences of my life. Draw your own conclusions.
The Incredibly Intrepid Italian: Who Was Fabrizio Quattrocchi?
Fabrizio Quattrocchi was born on 9 MAY 1968 in Catania, Italy. He trained as a baker before eventually finding work as a security contractor in Iraq. In 2004, Iraq was an absolute hellhole. However, in chaos, there is profit. There was money to be made in this space. Quattrocchi was an old-school mercenary.
Iraq, Captivity, and a Hole in the Earth
Operating in a war zone is the most dangerous of human pursuits. That’s why the money is so good. With so many heavily armed folks running about with deeply held political and theological agendas, people invariably get hurt. Quattrocchi, along with three fellow Italian soldiers-for-hire named Umberto Cupertino, Maurizio Agliana, and Salvatore Stefio were captured by a lunatic mob called the Green Brigade of the Prophet.
Quattrocchi and his buddies were working for DTS Security LLC. DTS was incorporated in Nevada and run by a former Italian Marine/French Foreign Legionnaire named Paolo Simeone and Italian lawyer Valeria Castellini. They tried to get their guys back, but DTS was a company, not a nation-state. It takes some serious resources to recruit, train, equip, and employ SEAL Team 6. For a time, at least, these four poor guys were on their own.
The Green Brigade of the Prophet felt they needed to make an example to ensure they were being taken seriously. As a result, they forced Fabrizio Quattrocchi to dig his own grave. These homicidal losers then placed a hood over his head and made him kneel in the soft earth next to his hole. Like all professional nutjob psychopaths, they had also set up video recording equipment to preserve the moment in all its gory glory. It really is tough for me to visualize raw, unfettered hate on this scale.
I’ll Show You How an Italian Dies: Quattrocchi’s Final Defiance
Quattrocchi knew exactly what was about to happen. He had, after all, just dug the hole. He was in a place that would rightly terrify all sensible people everywhere. Quattrocchi was about to face his own mortality, and there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop it.
Tragically, lots of folks have been there before. Some beg for their lives, imploring their captors for mercy. Others spit venom from the precipice of the abyss. Quattrocchi, for his part, clawed at his hood so he could see the men who were about to take his life and shouted, “Vi faccio vedere come muore un Italiano!” This translates to, “I’ll show you how an Italian dies!” One of the terrorists then stepped forward and shot him through the back of the neck. At least it was quick. Quattrocchi was 35 years old at the time of his death.
The Rest of the Story: Rescue, Honor, and Controversy
American forces later raided the safehouse where they were being held and rescued the three remaining Italian security contractors along with a Pole named Jerzy Kos. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi personally approved the mission in advance. Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi awarded Fabrizio Quattrocchi a posthumous Gold Medal for Civil Valour. This award demands a specific documented act of bravery to be eligible. Quattrocchi’s defiance towards the men who murdered him seemed more than adequate.
Curiously, not everyone in Italy felt this way. Almost all Italians rightfully reviled Saddam Hussein and Muslim fundamentalist terrorists in general. However, most Italians also disapproved of their country’s involvement in the Iraq War. Then, as now, much of the civilized world would sooner ignore such problems in hopes that they would just go away.
Quite a few Italians had lost their lives amidst the tumultuous fighting in the Middle East. Folks from across the Italian political spectrum griped that their particular people had not been afforded comparable accolades. Whatever. Fabrizio Quattrocchi was a freaking animal, no matter the metric.
Ruminations: What Fabrizio Quattrocchi Left Behind
There are some cruel jokes levied at our brothers in France and Italy. Why are all of the major thoroughfares in France lined with big trees? Because the Germans like to march in the shade. What is the world’s shortest list? A compilation of contemporary Italian war heroes. Such stuff stems from a deplorable tendency by much of modern Europe to eschew the manly arts.
Nowadays, good old-fashioned patriotism is denigrated as nationalism, something to be avoided no matter the cost. Europe looks at the monsters in the gates (I’m talking to you, Vladimir Putin and the Iranian theocrats) and fails to take action because they have convinced themselves over decades that what they have is no longer worth defending. The Union Jack is arguably the most compelling national standard on Planet Earth, yet many modern Britons hate it because they have been conditioned to view their own flag as a symbol of oppression. Such national self-flagellation will not take them to a good place in a world so liberally populated with hate-fueled psychos like the Green Brigade of the Prophet.
Fabrizio Quattrocchi was a proper man to the end. He faced his death and those who were killing him with poise, power, and defiance. The scumbags who murdered him are rightfully gone and forgotten. The world is objectively way better off without them. As we corn-fed Americans wax introspective regarding how to comport ourselves when faced with uncertainty and violence both at home and abroad, might I recommend we actually take hints from a certain brass-balled Italian baker? Fabrizio Quattrocchi showed us all how to die well.
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Will is still trying to figure out what he really wants to be when he grows up. However, shooting guns and claiming it was work seemed like a pretty sweet hustle. As a result, Will serendipitously transformed an avocation into a vocation.
Raised in the Mississippi Delta, Will flew UH1H, OH58A/C, CH47D and AH1S helicopters operationally as an Army Aviator. He is SCUBA-qualified and has parachuted out of perfectly good airplanes at 3 o’clock in the morning. Will has summited Mount McKinley, Alaska, six times…always at the controls of an Army helicopter, which is the only way sensible folk climb mountains.
Will has delivered sixty babies and occasionally wrung human blood out of his socks. He is married to his high school sweetheart and has three awesome adult children. Turn-ons include vintage German machineguns, flying his sexy-cool RV6A airplane, Count Chocula cereal and the movie “Aliens.”
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