On Base, Plea to Give Each Death Its Due: Monthly group services replace services after each death

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: On Base, a Plea to Give Each Death Its Due


Friends, comrades and family members pay their respects to Sgt. Joel Anthony Dahl and Cpl. Victor Abraham Garcia, who both recently killed in Iraq, at a small chapel at Fort Lewis, Wash.
(Kevin P. Casey for The New York Times)

FORT LEWIS, Wash. — 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.

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.

(Its commander, Lt. Gen. Charles H. Jacoby, was expected to decide Wednesday whether to go through with it.)

“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.”...

***

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....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/25/us/25funeral.html?hp

[thecrow]

1. It's called "escalation" n/t

[bananas]

2. Next will be mass graves.

[johnnie]

3. Snopes addresses this

http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/fortlewis.asp