Final Salute by Jim Sheeler

Author:Jim Sheeler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US

25

Unprepared

CASUALTY NOTIFICATION ISN’T always conducted with the same care.

In 2005, in the underbelly of the Chicago airport, Alan Patten saw his son’s casket for the first time. It was presented to him on a forklift.

"It was like he was just a piece of luggage or cargo,” Mr. Patten said. "I thought, ’This is the way servicemen get treated when they come home from making the ultimate sacrifice?’ ”

The Patten family’s experience was one of many missteps by a military that was caught off guard by the number of casualties after the war began.

Another family in Illinois thought it insensitive that when informing them of their son’s death, the casualty assistance officer literally read from a script. Others have watched their casualty officers "drop off the radar” or end up in Iraq with no replacement provided. In some cases, the military has taken months to pay for a funeral or left families alone to navigate the morass of paperwork that followed a service member’s death.

More than two years after Lance Corporal Andrew Patten’s death, his father said he still had not received some of his son’s most precious possessions, including the camera containing his last photos of life in Iraq. Mr. Patten said he was initially given incorrect information about how his son died, and he had gone more than a year before hearing from his casualty assistance officer.

"They call them brothers in the service, but if this is the way you treat your fellow Marines—It just left a bad taste,” he said.

Mr. Patten had expected to bring his son back to the church where he found solace and strength—the church that regularly sent enough food and supplies for his entire platoon. That faith never wavered, his father said, as he preached to his troops to the point where they called him "The Rev.”

It’s that faith, and a willingness to sacrifice himself, that his father says still manages to overshadow most military mistakes.

"He practiced his belief. He was razzed, even kidded about it, but at the memorial service they came forward in tears and said he knew what he stood for,” his father said. "I’m extremely proud of him, for his service for God and country, as a parent. And I know I’ll join him one day.”

Other cases surfaced during congressional testimony by war widows. Jennifer McCollum of Jacksonville, Florida, complained about the lack of emotional support and direction after her husband died.

"My situation is not unique, and as a matter of fact, I am discovering that casualty assistance is increasingly failing miserably and disgracefully,” she told the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs in 2005. "Successful casualty assistance is not the rule; it is quite the exception. Not only is there a significant lack of continuity, but casualty assistance is a ’learn as you go’ for officers that otherwise have jobs that need to be done for the unit or squadron to continue and maintain. This is certainly not the military taking care of its own.”

She also said she had dealt with

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