Young Soldier Both Revered and Reviled

Sergeant Gibbs played defensive end on the football team as a high school freshman. At 6-foot-4 and 220 pounds, he was “the strongest kid I ever played against,” Mr. Thomas said. The friends played video games and rode skateboards, often spending time at the Gibbses’ house because friends said his parents were nice. Friends say all he ever wanted to be was a soldier.

His parents sent him away to an alternative school in Montana that often steered its students into the military. Sergeant Gibbs received a graduate equivalency degree from the program in the fall of 2002, having already enlisted in the military. He had dreamed of being in the Marines but, without a high school diploma, entered the Army instead.

A lawyer for Sergeant Gibbs declined to comment, as did Sergeant Gibbs’s parents. A sister began to cry when she was asked about him and said her brother had requested that she not speak to reporters. Friends said they did not believe the charges.

“People get messed up in the head,” during combat missions, said Paul Thomas, Eric Thomas’s older brother. “But not Calvin. He was always a rock.”

Paul Thomas is a former Marine. He said he had not seen Sergeant Gibbs since 2006. Since then, Sergeant Gibbs has served two tours in Afghanistan after serving one earlier in Iraq. Now, more than one soldier who served with him described him or his actions as “savage.”

Private Stoner said Sergeant Gibbs “associates with skinheads online.” Specialist Morlock said Sergeant Gibbs had “pure hatred” for all Afghans. Fingers he is accused of collecting are now part of the evidence in the case, as is a tooth he is said to have pulled from a dead Afghan and bones other soldiers said he dug up.

Sergeant Gibbs has refused to speak to military investigators. But during fingerprinting and photographing in May, he was required to show his tattoos. On his lower left leg was an image of crossed pistols and six skulls. He told an investigator, according to an investigation transcript, that the skulls were “his way of keeping count of the kills he had. The skulls that were in red were the ones from Iraq and the other three were the kills he had in Afghanistan.”

Soldiers interviewed by investigators say Sergeant Gibbs had alluded to previous crimes he committed in Iraq, including one in which he shot into a car carrying an Iraqi family with children. By early this spring, as Sergeant Gibbs and others were being investigated, military investigators were widening their inquiry, specifically asking about a possible shooting in Iraq in early 2004.

“How many deployments has SSG Gibbs had?” investigators asked. “Need to determine if there was any suspicious incidents or investigations during all deployments.”

At least one soldier has said Sergeant Gibbs had photographs of bodies from his deployment to Iraq. A spokesman for the Army’s central Criminal Investigations Division in Virginia said he could not discuss whether Sergeant Gibbs had faced previous criminal investigations or charges.

Before Sergeant Gibbs invoked his right to a lawyer during an interview with investigators in May, investigators say he told them that “all incidents where he has been involved in are exactly how they are reported, meaning he was attacked and he then responded with his M-4, killing the local national. When questioned on whether any of the incidents were staged, SSG Gibbs stated that was offensive.”

Pfc. Adam W. Kelly, who is accused of assaulting Private Stoner along with several other soldiers, as well as possessing hashish, told investigators that he admired Sergeant Gibbs, as did others in their platoon, from senior officers to subordinates, and that he “displayed solid tactics.”

“I believe that because of his experience that more people came back alive and uninjured than would have without him having been part of the platoon,” Private Kelly said.

Sgt. Gibbs is married to a soldier based in the United States, Pfc. Chelsy M. Gibbs. They were married in a Mormon church in Billings. In 2008 they had a son, Calvin Richard Gibbs Jr. On her MySpace page, Private Gibbs listed her husband as one of her heroes, “for putting up with me, but mostly for the sacrifices he makes for our country.”