A visitor no family wants

[unhappycamper]

Avery Gamboa, 4, places a flower on the grave of his father, Army Staff Sgt. Joseph D. Gamboa, who was killed by an enemy mortar strike in Baghdad on March 26.


A visitor no family wants
By Seth Robson, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Sunday, November 30, 2008

GRAFENWÖHR, Germany — A knock at the door … two soldiers in Class A uniforms standing outside. It’s something every family of a deployed soldier dreads.

For personnel assigned to notify the family of a soldier killed in action in Iraq or Afghanistan, it is an assignment that comes along, usually, only once in a career.

To make sure it is done right, the Army requires that soldiers tasked with casualty notification receive a minimum of two days of training at a local Casualty Assistance Office. The Grafenwöhr office goes beyond that, organizing extra training sessions with role-players taking the part of the bereaved family member.

Mario Mena, an assistant casualty manager at Grafenwöhr, trains casualty notification officers and casualty assistance officers — soldiers who assist families in the weeks and months following a soldier’s death. The 43-year-old retired first sergeant with 26 years of active-duty service saw his share of casualties when he deployed to Iraq in 2004 with the 2nd Dagger Brigade — now the 172nd Infantry Brigade based at Grafenwöhr.

These days, he supervises the casualty notification and assistance training from an office filled with photographs of fallen soldiers who were stationed at the garrison and news clippings of stories about them. The office also makes sure commanders inform families of any wounded or injured soldiers in a timely manner and provides retirement services, he said.


Rest opf article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=59134

[MrSlayer]

1. Poor kid will never learn how to be a man from his father.

And for what? Honestly, it's just so tragic. Nothing was gained.

[NYVet]

2. This is where the family support system comes into the picture.

My father left my mother when I was 5. I learned what a man was from watching and listening to my grandfather, my uncles, and the men of the church I went to on Sunday.

And what was gained you ask? I can't say it with a 100% certainty but I am willing to bet that when this young man asks his family about his father, they will tell him stories of someone who believed in the ideals that made this country so much that he was willing to put his life at risk to share them with men and women who were under the heel of a brutal dictator.