(continued)

DIED ON THE FOURTH OF JULY (From left) Johnson, with his mom in 1981; graduating from basic; his final resting place

When it was over, Johnson still held the gang's "colors" in his hand. He had made it through, bloodied but still breathing. Back in Baltimore, when he played for the Carver Vocational-Technical High School football team, the five foot, three inch running back used to deflect hits from guys twice his size. He'd certainly survived worse torture during his 15 months in Iraq. He had a Purple Heart to prove it, earned after a Humvee he was riding in took a hit from a mortar, tossing him onto an Iraqi street and injuring his back.

Lax enlistment standards have inadvertently allowed known members of the Crips, Bloods, Latin Kings, and various white supremacist groups to join the militaryCompared to that, this was nothing. Besides, Johnson had been looking forward to his "jumping in," the initiation rite of the Chicago-based gang. He hadn't mentioned it to his wife, of course. Pregnant with their first child, she was obsessively fixing up the house; in just two weeks, he was due for a discharge. All he told her was that he was thinking about joining the Masons.

He hadn't mentioned the gang to his mother either. He could only imagine how she would react. After all, she had pressed him to join the Army as a way of escaping the drugs and gangs of his famously tough neighborhood. He never would have been able to convince her that the Gangster Disciples were anything but street thugs. But he knew them as a much more sophisticated operation, one that offered him the kinds of rewards the Army had promised but failed to deliver.

Johnson figured he'd be fine with a little bit of sleep. He began swaying woozily as he shuffled to his barracks, and a couple of his buddies ran over and held him up. He told them he was all right, but they insisted. After tossing him in the shower, they stretched his battered body out on his bunk. Then they went out to a local club.

The next morning, on July 4, 2005, Sergeant Juwan Johnson, a decorated Iraq War vet and full-fledged member of the Gangster Disciples, was found dead from internal injuries. He was 25.