Cole sailor describes bombing, but was he even on the ship?

In early November, retired Senior Chief Jeffrey Sparenberg was the guest of honor at military heritage day in Delaware.

Sparenberg spent 23 years in the Navy, including time on the destroyer Cole, and he was at Fort DuPont State Park that day to donate a flag that he said flew over the Cole shortly after it was attacked nine years ago.

The flag, he hoped, would be put on view at the planned Delaware Military Museum.

A photograph from the ceremony shows Sparenberg on the steps of a shuttered brick building. The left side of his chest is covered with military medals - including a Bronze Star and Purple Heart, purportedly from the actions he took and the injuries he suffered in that lunchtime attack.

Seventeen sailors died in the suicide bombing on Oct. 12, 2000, during a refueling stop in Aden, Yemen.

Sparenberg's detailed account of that fateful day was published on Nov. 16 in a front-page story in The News Journal of Wilmington, Del.

Now Sparenberg is back in the spotlight: The Navy and the ship's former commander say he was not on the Norfolk-based ship at all on the day it was struck.

They don't know whether the flag he donated actually flew aboard the Cole. And the two most significant medals he wore to the Delaware ceremony are also in doubt.

Lt. John Daniels, a Navy spokesman at the Pentagon, said Sparenberg's orders for the Cole show him joining the ship on Oct. 16, 2000 - four days after the bombing.

Retired Cmdr. Kirk Lippold, the Cole's skipper at the time, said he distinctly remembers being told after the attack that a new crew member was in Bahrain, waiting to join the ship.

Someone back in the States asked whether they should send the sailor back to the U.S., but Lippold - who'd just lost 17 crew members, including a senior chief - knew he could use more help. He gave approval for Sparenberg to join the crew.

"During the time he was on board the ship following the attack, he did an excellent job in helping the ship through some difficult times," Lippold said.

However, he added, "I know for a fact he wasn't aboard the day of the attack."

The News Journal has removed the original story from its Web site and says it will set the record straight after the Navy finishes looking into the matter.

Daniels said he wasn't sure how long that would take.

According to his personnel record, Daniels said, Sparenberg is not entitled to wear the Bronze Star or Purple Heart. The highest honor he earned in the Navy is a Meritorious Service Medal, shown to the right of the two combat honors in the photo.

"He was not in the line of fire on Oct. 12," Daniels said. "Him making any claims to being injured in the terrorist act on the USS Cole are not plausible."

Contacted on Thursday by The Virginian-Pilot, Sparenberg did not directly answer questions about when he arrived on the Cole or whether he wore medals he did not earn.

"I served on the Cole. I was with some of the greatest American heroes I know," said Sparenberg, who lives in Delaware.

He said he was trying to make sure the ship's crew was remembered and now has come under attack.

"I'm not going to say anything. I have no reason to say anything. I have no reason to prove anything," he said in response to a question about the medals.

Sparenberg said reliving the Cole attack is painful, and that he sometimes cries at night "thinking about what I had to do."

"I want this part of my life to go away," he said.

Lorrie Triplett might wish the same.

Triplett, who lives in Suffolk, lost her husband - Ensign Andrew Triplett - in the Cole attack. In the nine years since, she's raised their two daughters to be proud of their father's service.

In the Delaware newspaper article, Sparenberg talked in detail about working beside Triplett in the ship's fuels lab in the minutes before the blast. He described how Triplett told him to go to lunch - even mentioned the main entree that day in the galley - and how, seconds after he departed the lab, the detonation rocked the ship. Triplett died; Sparenberg lived.

Lorrie Triplett said Thursday she has never heard of Sparenberg. She's talked at length with two enlisted sailors who were in the fuels lab with her husband that morning, and through their accounts, she pieced together an idea of what her husband's final moments were like.

It's unsettling to her that someone the Navy said wasn't yet aboard the ship is now claiming a part in the narrative.

"It's like tampering with what happened," Triplett said.

"Why would you want to fabricate something to this extent for that event? Why would you want to say you were there at a tragedy?"

Kate Wiltrout, (757) 446-2629, kate.wiltrout@pilotonline.com