The Soldiers' Stories: When Soldiers Fall, Grief Binds a Unit’s 2 Worlds

BAGHDAD, Nov. 9 — Memorial services honoring fallen soldiers from the First Battalion, 22nd Infantry in Iraq used to require planning meetings of as long as 45 minutes. But at this point, they take barely five.

“We’re here again,” said Chaplain John Hill. A roadside bomb had killed yet another soldier from the battalion the day before. He began to recite the unit’s “memorial ceremony execution matrix,” a 40-item checklist of tasks that includes everything from collecting personal effects to finding a singer.

Lt. Col. Craig Osborne, the battalion’s commander, said, “Unfortunately, we’ve gotten, I won’t say, good at this,” and he wrapped up the meeting almost as soon as it began. “It’s become habitual.”

In October, 105 American troops were killed in Iraq, the most since January 2005. The spike in deaths, more than three years after the war began, became a major factor in the sweeping Democratic gains in Congress this week. Colonel Osborne’s soldiers alone lost nine comrades, just as the battalion was beginning to make preparations to return home later this month.

“When something like this happens, all you do is think about it,” said Sgt. First Class Robert Warman, who last month watched a Humvee carrying four soldiers get blown to bits in front of him when a huge bomb hidden in the road exploded. “You think about it when you go to the mess hall, when you go to take a shower, when you lay down to sleep. You think, and you think, and you think, and you cry.”

Read the rest at the Washington Post