Witnesses describe a chaotic scene on board the USNS Roy P. Benavidez in the early hours of May 24, 2024, when Sgt. Quandarius Stanley was critically injured, according to an Army investigation obtained by WHRO.
In his last State of the Union Address in 2024, then-President Joe Biden ordered the military to construct a floating pier off the coast of Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid. The Israeli government had limited the amount of food getting into the region by land. The first troops from the Army’s 7th Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary) left Virginia at the end of March.
Throughout the mission, basic details of how the food would be loaded and processed kept changing, including the amount of food aid being loaded onto trucks bound for Gaza. As part of the elaborate security system, pallets of aid were inspected and loaded onto ships at Cyprus, then off-loaded onto commercial trucks bound for Gaza, using a floating pier.
By the night of the accident, soldiers on the USNS Benavidez were working more than 10 hours a day to off-load cargo from the ship. After midnight, the crews had been ordered to load 66 more pallets of cargo onto semi trucks before 6 am — more than their supervisors thought they could load in less than six hours. The last-minute change “triggered a sense of urgency” among fatigued soldiers, investigators wrote in their report.
At the time, the Pentagon released few details about the accident. Bad weather and high seas often disrupted the operation. According to the Army report, Stanley was struck by a forklift driver while he was walking down a ramp inside the ship at 2:40 a.m. The driver was racing with a pallet, at more than double the speed set by the Army.
The driver was supposed to have another soldier walking with them, but that standard operating procedure was ignored as the units raced to load all of the trucks by the project’s deadline. Ironically, Stanley was on his way down to be a ground guide, when he was hit, according to the report.
The driver told investigators they saw the top of Stanley’s head just before the forklift hit him. Stanley was eventually medevaced to a hospital in Tel Aviv, then transferred to a Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Tx. He was medically discharged to a VA facility near his hometown in South Carolina less than a week before he died on October 31.
His mother, Anna Stanley, said at times her son showed signs of improvement, but he was never able to speak to her. She had not seen the report, but soldiers from her son’s unit told her some of the details.
“They should have had somebody walking in front,” she said. “They could have been more prepared — some kind of light, something flashing, you know, because people were saying it was dark up there. They couldn't see, really see. It was very chaotic up there.”
The 23-year-old sergeant had joined the Army in 2020, following in his grandfather’s footsteps. Before leaving Virginia for the eastern Mediterranean, he had reassured his mother that he would be OK. She remains convinced that the operation was worth the price her son paid.
“It was worth it. That's what he wanted to do. Oh yes, it was worth it,” she said.
Many of the findings of the investigation were redacted, but the Army found that soldiers were inexperienced and untrained.
“The pace of unit operations and mission requirements to load 66 more … pallets were too excessive and out of line with available resources. The change of mission requirements created urgency and personnel took shortcuts to meet increased pallet loads,” the report states.
Soldiers told investigators that the rank-and-file soldiers felt their concerns were being ignored as the U.S. pushed to get aid into Gaza despite bad weather and mounting equipment failures.
“The entire work force consensus is that not one person listens to the expertise within the formation … most feel that command does not care for the overall well being of the formation,” said one unnamed soldier, interviewed for the report.
An army official told WHRO that the 7th Transportation Brigade has been ordered to update operating procedures and safety training.
Humanitarian groups largely saw the effort as a distraction from efforts to convince the Israeli government to allow more food though more practical land crossings.
The pier was in place for less than three months, and operated for only 20 days. Originally, the Department of Defense estimated the pier would deliver up to 150 truck loads a day of supplies. It was a fraction of what humanitarian groups said was needed to feed the 2.5 million people living in Gaza, but enough to feed 500,000 people a month. In the end, the pier delivered enough aid to feed 450,000 people for one month, according to a report from the USAID Inspector General.
The Department of Defense Inspector General issued a report in May which found 62 people were injured during the operation, though there was no breakdown of whether they were hurt while on duty or had become ill unrelated to the operation. The Navy reported 27 of its vessels were damaged, costing $31 million. Army and Navy equipment was not designed to work together, which damaged each service’s equipment.
The Inspector General reported many of the same issues outlined in the Army’s accident investigation, namely that troops were poorly trained. The 7th Transportation Battalion also delayed its departure from Hampton Roads because its units were missing too many soldiers.
Over the last decade, the Army and the Navy had slashed their budgets for this kind of mobile pier operation. The Army decommissioned half of its fleet. At the time the Gaza mission unfolded, the Army and the Navy each had one unit left, with the capability to run cargo from ships to a temporary pier.
The Navy unit is stationed on the west coast, so the Army unit out of Fort Eustis took the lead.
The two units did not train together or operate with a common set of standards. The Army and Navy equipment was not designed to work together, which led to further breakdowns in the waters off the coast of Gaza. Even the radios were not compatible.
The Inspector General found the military may not be able to field a similar operation without serious changes.
In the meantime, the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has only grown worse over the last year. The United Nations World Food Programme declared in July that the region is on the brink of famine.
