Giving Tragic News Among Hardest Jobs in the Military

When Charlotte Starling saw two Marines and a Navy chaplain walking to the front door of her home in South Daytona, Fla., she knew instantly why they were there.

“They didn’t have to say a word,” Starling said. “I knew it could only be one thing: [her son] Jeffrey was on the helicopter that crashed in San Diego.”

At nearly the same time, two Marines appeared at the home of Jean and Walter Sabasteanski in Standish, Maine, to talk about their son. And in Lake Elsinore, Marines from Camp Pendleton, accompanied by their wives, were at the home of Marine wife Lena Dame.

In a dozen stunned and grieving homes across the country last week, Marines and Navy personnel were consoling relatives of six Marines and a Navy medical corpsman killed in the crash a day earlier of a CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter during a training exercise 14 miles at sea.

It is a heart-rending tableau familiar to Americans through direct experience or the movies.

This is a nation that has lost a million of its sons, and many of its daughters, during military service.

Even without combat casualties, 800-plus U.S. military personnel, out of an active-duty force of 1.4 million, will die this year from training accidents, sickness, off-duty traffic accidents, suicide and other causes.

The very sight of a military car with officers in dress uniform can spread wordless terror through an on-base neighborhood.

“Sometimes, before you can even open your mouth, they look right at you and say: ‘Is he dead?’ ” said Major John VandenBerghe, an infantry officer at Camp Pendleton who has made casualty calls.

Part of Pop Culture

Scenes of families learning of the loss of a loved one in military service are woven into literature and movies, from Mr. Gower, the pharmacist in “It’s A Wonderful Life,” dissolving in tears and anger after learning of his son’s death from pneumonia, to the fear among the female baseball players in “A League of Their Own” when a telegram arrives from the War Department, to Mrs. Ryan collapsing on her front porch in “Saving Private Ryan.”

The U.S. military takes the notification process extremely seriously, with detailed written procedures and a training film explaining how word of a death or serious injury should be delivered and what assistance the military can extend to families who have suffered a loss.

“The Navy is a family,” said Navy Lt. Matt Acuff, an engineer with the SEALs, who has done casualty calls. “When there is a death, that’s when families have to pull together.”

Notification is done by officers and senior noncommissioned officers who are assigned to several months of casualty call duty in addition to their other duties. Training is brief.

The first priority is that the spouse or family member learn the bad news from the military rather than another source, an increasingly difficult task in an era of worldwide cellular phone connections, shipboard e-mails and 24-hour news operations.

“It can be a real fight to get to the front door before word gets there,” said Shari Lawrence, spokeswoman for the Army’s Personnel Command in Alexandria, Va.

Regulations call for notification, in person, of “primary and secondary family members,” which generally means a spouse and the nearest blood relative.

Military officials know from bitter experience that a botched notification process can lead to a devastating sense of betrayal on the part of the survivors and other military personnel and their families.

In San Diego, there is still anger in military circles three decades later that the wife of an Army Ranger learned that he had been killed in combat in Vietnam by reading a note left on her doorstep. The officers assigned to make the notification had grown tired of waiting.

“Marines in San Diego were livid at how the Army mishandled the notification,” said John Kaheny, a retired Marine colonel and now Chula Vista city attorney. “Marines came in and handled all the arrangements after they heard about it.”

The Navy once enlisted long-distance truckers to use their CB-radios to find a fellow trucker whose son had been killed before he learned another way.

When there is a shipboard accident, ship captains can turn off the e-mail function of the ship’s computer system to keep information from racing ashore before formal notification can be made.

Consideration for the Family

Although each service varies slightly, the basics are the same: The notification officers are accompanied by a chaplain and, in some cases, a doctor, nurse or medical technician.

The official verbiage leans heavily on the word “regrets.” “The secretary of the Navy regrets . . . “ “The commandant of the Marine Corps regrets . . . “ “The president of the United States regrets . . . “

Casualty call officers are told to stay as long as the family wants. Later, an officer or senior enlisted person is assigned as the official liaison with the family, to answer questions and provide assistance in matters such as child care, life insurance, military housing and funeral arrangements.

An official telegram will be brought to the house within two days.

Some families--like that of Staff Sgt. William Craig Dame, 33, an explosive ordnance technician who was among the seven killed in last week’s crash--find the presence of fellow service members comforting.

“We had so many Marines in the house over the weekend, it was wonderful,” said Laura D’Albero of San Diego, Dame’s aunt. “If more civilians cared for each other like Marines care for each other, this would be a better world.”

Other families--like the Starlings and the Sabasteanskis--preferred to begin the grieving process alone after receiving the notification.

“We’re a very private family,” said Charlotte Starling, whose husband and older son were also Marines. Jeffrey Starling, 27, was a staff sergeant and field radio operator.

He had planned to fly to Florida on Monday to join his family for Christmas. Instead, his parents, his fiancee and other family members will attend a memorial service Monday at Camp Pendleton to honor him and the others who died.

“I thanked the two Marines and said the family could handle it from there,” said Walter Sabasteanski, father of Staff Sgt. Vincent A. Sabasteanski, 34.

The Marine Corps is paying for the air fare, motels and car rentals for survivors to attend the Monday service. There is also an immediate $600 payment for incidental expenses; families who live in military housing have a grace period of six months after the death of the service member.

“I don’t think I’d be coping as well without the Marine Corps family,” said Marianne Paige, whose husband, Gunnery Sgt. James P. Paige Jr., 37, was the crew chief aboard the ill-fated Sea Knight. “The Marines and their wives have brought food for me, prepared meals, done baby-sitting, picked up people, anything I needed. The Marines take care of their own.”

Paige was in Pennsylvania with her parents when the big helicopter went down. She was talking about the crash by telephone to her house-sitting niece in Chula Vista when two Marines arrived at her home.

The Marine Corps immediately dispatched two sergeants from the Pennsylvania area to console her and her family at her parents’ home in the Pocono Mountains.

Although it was not the case in the CH-46 crash, an untimely death can exacerbate family schisms, and the notification team can be caught in the middle.

Often There Are No Answers

“Not everybody’s family is a pretty picture,” said Senior Master Sgt. Rod Ouimette, until recently the supervisor of casualty services at Randolph Air Force Base in Texas. “The Air Force tries to surround the family to get them through the process.

“Some of the family members just go numb,” Ouimette added. “Others have lots of questions.”

Agonizingly, there are often no answers for those questions, particularly in the first days after a death.

Until the Korean War, personal notification of military casualties was not required.

Indeed, in the Civil War there was no formal process for notifying families beyond issuing lists to newspapers or having them posted in public places.

In World War I and World War II, notification was by telegram, though some personal visits were made in the latter conflict. In the final stages of Korea and during the Vietnam War, personal visits were the rule.

Military personnel say casualty calls are among the toughest jobs.

“I had a very good chaplain,” VandenBerghe said about his casualty calls. “He took care of the family and he took care of me.”

Even after the Monday memorial service, there will be myriad tasks and details for the survivors and the personnel assigned to help them.

Marianne Paige, for example, plans a memorial service for her husband in Pennsylvania on Wednesday. It would have been their ninth wedding anniversary.