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On Base, a Plea to Give Each Death Its Due
By WILLIAM YARDLEY, The New York Times
Twenty soldiers deployed to Iraq from
this Army base were killed in May, a
monthly high. That same month, the base
announced a change in how it would honor
its dead: instead of units holding
services after each death, they would be
held collectively once a month.
Soldiers lingered in the chapel at Fort
Lewis after a service for Sgt. Joel A.
Dahl and Cpl. Victor A. Garcia, who were
killed by small-arms fire. nFriends,
comrades and family members paid their
respects to Sgt. Dahl and Cpl. Garcia.
The anger and hurt were immediate.
Soldiers’ families and veterans
protested the change as cold and
logistics-driven. Critics online said
the military was trying to repress bad
news about deaths. By mid-June, the base
had delayed the plan.
“If I lost my husband at the beginning
of the month, what do you do, wait until
the end of the month?” asked Toni
Shanyfelt, who said her husband was
serving one of multiple tours in Iraq.
“I don’t know if it’s more convenient
for them, or what, but that’s insane.”
Military historians and scholars say the
proposal and its fallout highlight the
tender questions facing the armed forces
as casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan
mount, and some soldiers and their
families come to expect more from
military bases than in past conflicts.
During Vietnam and Korea, the historians
say, many bases were places for training
soldiers and shipping them out, rarely
to see them return, with memorial
services uncommon. Now, in the age of
the all-volunteer force, the base has
become the center of community. The Army
and other branches have fostered the
idea that military service is as much
about education, job training and
belonging to a community as national
defense.
“It wasn’t considered the Army’s
business in any of the other wars to
conduct these services,” said Alan H.
Archambault, director of the Fort Lewis
Military Museum, which is supported by
the Army. “It was the hometowns of the
soldiers that died that had these. Now I
think the Army bases are trying to be
the hometowns.”
Army officials said the idea to hold
monthly services reflected a need to
find balance between honoring the dead
and the practical reality that the
services take time to plan, including
things like coordinating rifle salutes
and arranging receptions for family
members who attend.
“As much as we would like to think
otherwise, I am afraid that with the
number of soldiers we now have in harm’s
way, our losses will preclude us from
continuing to do individual memorial
ceremonies,” Brig. Gen. William Troy,
who was the interim commander at Fort
Lewis at the time, wrote in an e-mail
message announcing the policy in May.
The Army also emphasizes that the
ceremonies held on bases are in addition
to those held by the soldier’s unit
overseas as well as private family
services, which usually include military
honor guards. Those services would not
be affected if Fort Lewis moved to a
monthly schedule.
Fort Lewis, the third-largest Army base
in the nation, has about 10,000 of its
28,000 soldiers deployed overseas, a
majority of them in Stryker brigades
trained specially for urban combat.
Several other major bases, including
Fort Hood in Texas, the largest, already
hold services monthly. Some hold them
even less frequently.
“There is no Army-wide policy to have
any memorial services,” a spokeswoman
for the Army, Maj. Cheryl Phillips, said
in an e-mail message. “Commanders make
the call. Several installations have
conducted services for each individual
soldier and now have begun to roll them
into a quarterly service because, alas,
the casualty numbers are rising.”
At many bases, local elected officials
attend the services. At Fort Hood, whose
First Cavalry Division has 19,000
soldiers overseas, many of these
officials are veterans with ties to the
base or the Army.
“It really is important that we keep it
scheduled and that these people all have
it on their calendars,” said Diane
Battaglia, a spokeswoman for Fort Hood.
Ms. Battaglia said the monthly services
helped bring families together, a point
also made by General Troy at Fort Lewis.
“I see this as a way of sharing the
heavy burdens our spouses and rear
detachments bear, while giving our
fallen warriors the respect they
deserve,” General Troy wrote in the
e-mail message. “It will also give the
families of the fallen the opportunity
to bond with one another, as they see
others who share their grief.”
Ms. Battaglia said the Fort Hood
soldiers received individual eulogies at
the monthly services. “It has worked
phenomenally well,” she said.
At Fort Lewis, however, tension has been
evident; changing a ritual, especially
as the death toll is rising, strikes
some as disrespectful.
“By reducing it to once a month, I think
they’re taking away from us,” said Staff
Sgt. Jason Angelle. “Soldiers deserve
individual honors.”
Sue Rothwell, who runs a diner popular
among soldiers that is just outside the
main gate, said she had long opposed the
war in Iraq but had recently made a
public point of honoring those who serve
in it. Several weeks ago she started
putting the last names of soldiers who
had died on the reader board outside the
restaurant, called Galloping Gertie’s,
under the heading, “The numbers have names.”
Ms. Rothwell said she opposed monthly
services. “Individuals gave their
lives,” she said. “But if you have
services just once a month, the other 29
days you don’t have to think about it.
Well, isn’t that convenient.”
For now, at least, those who die are
eulogized as hometown heroes, either
individually or by division.
“We owe them the highest gratitude a
nation can give,” Lt. Col. John Pettit,
a chaplain, said at a memorial service
in July for two soldiers. Sgt. Joel A.
Dahl and Cpl. Victor A. Garcia were
killed by small-arms fire in Iraq.
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