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Karl Loren Note: As many of you know "Karl Loren" is my "professional name" while "Loren C. Troescher" is my name of birth.
I
have six children and many grandchildren -- including
Garth Troescher whose name is mentioned in the article below.
I would pick up, beyond my pride at having a grandson serving his country, that these men take a very dim view of terrorists, or even "ghoulish media feeders" who think there is some "news value" in displaying body parts, or putting so much media attention on the "gore of war!"
The images on the left and also on the right are my grandson, Garth Troescher, in Iraq and at home.
The source of this story is the Los Angeles Times -- very well known for its liberal bias -- it's "hate Bush" themes and it's "covert cut and run news coverage" about Iraq. The LA Times, obviously, thought that this story would fuel the flames of dissent over the ongoing war in Iraq.
He is quoted in the LA Times, saying:
*
"It's different when it's someone who looks like you, is your
age and rank and is wearing the same uniform," said Lance Cpl. Garth Troescher, 23, of Brandywine, Md.
Personally I think the intended spin by the LA Times will backfire -- that more people will be proud of this mortuary unit and what they do than will be persuaded to be cowards and weirdoes.
As Garth, my grandson, wrote to me, personally, a few days ago, "Those soldiers who support Bush are NOT the ones who are the cowards and weirdoes here. It is the cowards and weirdoes who want to leave."
Obviously there is an intense fight going on
among the media. My grandson told me that CNN was due to come to his unit
to cover this same story, and that there was an article scheduled for a Chicago
newspaper. The photo on the left is the Humvee in front of Garth -- about
10 miles from Fallujah.
These things are not done without notice by the other media, so the Wall Street Journal decided that it had to counteract the liberal spin of the LA Times with its own story HERE.
One day into the first Gulf War in 1991, the Bush administration closed the Dover ceremonies to the public. Since then the policy has been inconsistent. The Clinton administration invited the media to Dover following the fatal crash of U.S. Commerce Secretary Ronald Brown's plane. It also allowed pictures of the caskets coming home from the USS Cole to be distributed. In March, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon issued a directive that there would be no media coverage of the Dover ceremonies.
Supporters of that move argue that publicizing the Dover missions could let both pro-war and anti-war partisans exploit the solemn event for political ends. "These families don't want to become a political football," says Peter Feaver, a political scientist at Duke University who studies military culture. (Source)
Loren C. Troescher, AKA Karl Loren
WSJ, May 27, 2004: Private Duty: Army Brings Home Its Dead Without Fanfare
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TAQADDUM, Iraq — It is, one Marine said, like watching a brother die every day.
As the U.S. military death toll mounts in Iraq, the trauma on the overall force
is softened by the fact that the fallen troops come from different battalions
and different companies. In a force of 30,000 Marines, for example, only a few
will be able to say they knew someone who died.
But for the 20 members of the Marine mortuary affairs unit in this former Iraqi
air base west of Baghdad, each person lost to combat or accident becomes a
personal memory as they gather the body parts at the scene, sift through
possessions and prepare the often mangled body for shipment back to the United
States.
Speed is of the essence. The Marine Corps wants the body on a flight to Dover
Air Force Base in Maryland before the family gets the fateful knock on the door
by casualty assistance officers.
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The unit, stationed at a base run by the 1st Force Service Support Group from
Camp Pendleton, mobilizes within 20 minutes of notification to speed to the
scene of a military death anywhere in the Al Anbar province, the heart of the
so-called Sunni Triangle.
"We want to get that kid off the ground as soon as possible," said Chief Warrant
Officer James Patterson, who runs the mortuary unit. The Marine Corps runs a
second mortuary unit at a base 100 miles north of here, and the Army has one in
Baghdad.
In two months, the Taqaddum unit has sent 56 dead Americans home to their
relatives. Six dead Iraqis also have been identified and turned over to their
families.
The emotional wear and tear is considerable. Some members have asked to be
transferred out of the unit; some have been ordered back to the United States by
Navy doctors.
Getting to the scenes can also be dangerous. At least twice, members of the unit
have had to fight their way past insurgents to recover bodies.
Training for the unit included duty at morgues in Baltimore and Washington.
Members say it was worthwhile, but it did not prepare them for the trauma of
seeing dead comrades so frequently.
"It's different when it's someone who looks like you, is your age and rank and
is wearing the same uniform," said Lance Cpl. Garth Troescher, 23, of
Brandywine, Md. [He is actually 21 years old, not
23. The picture on the left is his father pictured with my daughter, Maia,
who is the ED of Vibrant Life. Garth Jr.'s wife, Kim, is on the right
side.]
"It reminds you of your own mortality and that you're in a combat zone," said
Cpl. Daniel Cotnoir, 31, of Lawrence, Mass. "You look down, and it's a Marine
who traveled the same road as you but wasn't as lucky."
At the scene of the death — be it from a firefight, vehicle accident or
detonation of an improvised explosive device — mortuary affairs members hunt for
even the smallest body part. One reason is to assist in identification; a basic
goal of the unit is that no Marine be listed as missing in action because a
positive identification cannot be made.
There is also another reason, a grisly one.
"I'm not interested in seeing a body part being waved as a war trophy on
television," said Patterson, 36, of Temecula.
Possessions also are gathered at the scene and where the Marine was housed.
Blood-splattered pictures and other belongings are washed before being sent
home.
Patterson checks to see whether the Marine — or soldier or sailor — had anything
in his possession that would increase the pain of family members. He is
empowered to ensure that such things do not reach the grieving family, even
though he has yet to exercise that authority.
Letters on the bodies are often wrenching. Some are from loved ones: "I hope you
are well when this reaches you."
Sometimes there are unfinished letters to parents and others, such as, "Don't
worry about me. I'm going to be OK."
Lance Cpl. Christian Slater, 21, of New Orleans was gathering a dead Marine's
possessions when he found an ultrasound picture of his unborn baby.
"I looked at it for a brief second and put it away quickly," Slater said. "I
couldn't look at it again. It was already burned into my brain."
To relieve stress, the mortuary affairs workers pump iron and listen to music.
In the beginning, they did their work in silence in their converted airplane
hangar, but later they found that music helped. "Fire and Rain" by James Taylor
is a favorite.
Some of the mortuary workers have civilian experience in the trade. For example,
Cotnoir, a reservist, is a licensed mortician who runs his family-owned funeral
home.
Most, however, are trained in other specialties but have volunteered for the
unit. Patterson, for example, is a specialist in nuclear, biological and
chemical warfare.
Patterson and the others were attracted by the motto of the unit: "No One Left
Behind." His team put the motto on the roof, making it one of the more visible
landmarks on this sprawling base.
But even many combat-toughened Marines prefer not to think about what the
mortuary Marines do. "They don't want to know the details," said Sgt. Mark Sohm,
31, of Frederick, Md.
The details of the job are laid out in no uncertain terms in a manual. For
example, pictures are never taken of the bodies. And those taken at the scene of
death should avoid showing the body.
Nomenclature has changed. In the beginning of the current Marine deployment that
began in late March, members of the unit referred to HR (human remains) and KIAs
(Killed in Action) as they examined bodies in five work areas and made detailed
drawings of the wounds.
"Somebody, I don't know who, said let's call them 'angels,' and it just fit,"
Patterson said. "That's what we're comfortable with: They're our angels, going
home."
May 27, 2004
PAGE ONE
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Private Duty: Army Brings Home Its Dead Without Fanfare
By GREG JAFFE
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
May 27, 2004; Page A1
The Iraq war became real for Pvt. Elijah Connell on May 15 in the cargo hold of a plane parked at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.
"Ready down," one of Pvt. Connell's fellow soldiers said in a voice just above a whisper.
The 20-year-old soldier and five of his colleagues bent and lifted a 500-pound aluminum container packed with ice and the body of a soldier killed 36 hours earlier in Iraq. It was Pvt. Connell's first Dover mission. His knees buckled slightly under the box's unexpected weight. He and his colleagues slid the container into a van bound for the mortuary there.
![[Portrait]](../../images/Connell_Elijah-GE47405262004205807.gif)
"This was a guy who just died. Two days ago, he was a soldier just like me," Pvt. Connell recalls thinking. "It hit me how much respect I had for him and how, 24 hours from now, we'll be right back here doing this again."
The young private is part of the Third U.S. Infantry Regiment, an elite unit that performs funerals in Arlington National Cemetery, guards the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, welcomes foreign dignitaries to the White House and Pentagon, and is responsible for defending the nation's capital.
The regiment, also known as the "Old Guard," is the public face of the Army in Washington. But for more than a year, it has performed a mission that the Bush administration has decided the public shouldn't see. Five or six times a week, a team of six soldiers, a regimental officer and a general board a Blackhawk helicopter and fly 100 miles to Dover to receive the flag-draped caskets of dead soldiers.
Once an image burned into Americans' minds during the Vietnam War, the ritual known in the military as "receiving the remains" has gone under wraps and has thus provoked a debate over how best to honor the war dead. Even Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, one of the chief architects of the Iraq war, didn't know how many U.S. troops had been killed in Iraq when asked by lawmakers last month. Mr. Wolfowitz, who guessed that about 500 troops had died, was off by more than 200. As of today, about 800 soldiers have died in Iraq. About 290,000 U.S. soldiers were killed in World War II; about 59,000 died in Vietnam.
On Sunday, "Doonesbury" creator Garry Trudeau plans to list in his comic strip the names of more than 700 Americans killed in Iraq. Last month, ABC's Nightline devoted an entire broadcast to displaying photos of the war dead while host Ted Koppel read their names.
One day into the first Gulf War in 1991, the Bush administration closed the Dover ceremonies to the public. Since then the policy has been inconsistent. The Clinton administration invited the media to Dover following the fatal crash of U.S. Commerce Secretary Ronald Brown's plane. It also allowed pictures of the caskets coming home from the USS Cole to be distributed. In March, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon issued a directive that there would be no media coverage of the Dover ceremonies.
Supporters of that move argue that publicizing the Dover missions could let both pro-war and anti-war partisans exploit the solemn event for political ends. "These families don't want to become a political football," says Peter Feaver, a political scientist at Duke University who studies military culture.
Pentagon officials say they don't intend to hide the dead. "We put out news releases when we have service members killed in action," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said recently. "We put out a subsequent news release when we've done the next-of-kin notification.
The soldiers who carry out the Dover missions disagree among themselves about whether their work should be private. "The Army is a family and this is the Army family's ceremony, the Army's funeral," Pvt. Connell says. "It is not intended for the public."
Chief Warrant Officer Second Class Jonathan Evans, a helicopter pilot on some of the missions, says he became convinced the public needs to see the caskets from Dover after flying his first mission there. "The first time I saw the soldiers carrying the coffins, the emotion of it all surged through me. I was moved and I realized the rest of the country wasn't."
As Iraq casualties have mounted, Third Regiment soldiers have struggled with apathy themselves. "On my first Dover mission, there were seven flag-draped caskets. When I saw them, my heart sunk to the bottom of my feet," says Lt. Michael Cormier, Pvt. Connell's platoon leader. "After 20 or 30 missions, though, the biggest battle you are fighting is to not let the process become routine. You want to hold that feeling from your first trip."
![[Portrait]](../../images/Cormier_Michael-GE47905262004205820.gif)
Only about 10% of the soldiers in the Third Regiment have been to Iraq or Afghanistan. Most are in their late teens or early 20s. To qualify for the unit, they must stand taller than 5-foot-10, score high on the Army's aptitude test and be selected by a boot-camp drill instructor.
Pvt. Connell, who hails from Salem, Mo., was a student at Missouri Valley College when he made a snap decision to enlist last year. "I felt called to serve," he says. "My parents tried to talk me out of it." Two weeks into boot camp, he was asked whether he wanted to join the Third Regiment. "I went from wanting to go over there to fight to doing my part here instead," he says.
About two thirds of the 1,200 soldiers in the Third Regiment participate in the Dover missions. In a courtyard behind a barracks at Fort Myer in Arlington, Va., they lift caskets and containers -- identical to those used at Dover -- hundreds of times. Sometimes they fill them with sandbags.
Pvt. Connell began the day of his first Dover journey just after dawn with an honor ceremony attended by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, followed later by wind sprints through Arlington National Cemetery. Just before nightfall, he and his fellow soldiers put on green camouflage uniforms, shiny black boots and white gloves and boarded a bus to Fort McNair in Washington to pick up a helicopter and a general.
Pvt. Connell slumped in the back of the bus, half asleep. Others chewed tobacco, read novels and teased one another. At Fort McNair, they performed one last rehearsal of the ceremony before the hour-long helicopter flight to Dover.
In the Dover waiting room, amid molded plastic chairs, cold pizza and a TV set blaring Fox News, Maj. Jeff Yocum, the Air Force mortuary-affairs officer, briefed Lt. Cormier on the mission. Reporters aren't allowed to go to Dover. Soldiers who were present reconstructed the scene afterward.
In military parlance, the cargo plane's contents are referred to as "HRs" or "human remains." On this night, Maj. Yocum said there were two sets of "HRs," one belonging to the Army and a second to the Marine Corps, which had sent its own casket team.
Until they step on the plane at Dover, the soldiers don't always know whose body they are carrying or what unit he served with. Sometimes they never find out. If there's just one casket, the job might take only 10 minutes. After a particularly bloody day in Iraq, receiving the remains can take an hour or more.
The cargo plane from Iraq landed around 9 p.m., and the soldiers stepped into position behind the tail. Lt. Cormier entered the cargo hold and scanned the Army container to make sure the flag was attached tightly and hadn't been smudged during the flight.
"Forward march," he called, and the six-man team lined up along each side of the casket. Behind them stood Brig. Gen. Louis Weber and the presiding Dover chaplain. Some days a chaplain in his prayer mentions the fallen soldier's name and describes how he died. On this day the prayer was short and generic: "God speed this fallen soldier, who gave his life in Iraq, on to his family."
Pvt. Connell strained to hear the chaplain's words while, to his left, Spc. Daniel Weidemann, a veteran of the unit, tried to block them out. "I try to stay focused on what we're doing. The only voice I am listening for is Lt. Cormier's," he said.
"Ready down," Lt. Cormier commanded.
As the van doors slammed on the container, the lieutenant commanded the troops to present arms. The soldiers saluted and the van inched down the tarmac to the Dover mortuary while the soldiers marched silently in tow.
Before they boarded the helicopter for home, Gen. Weber pulled the soldiers together on the tarmac. "The soldiers you are taking off these airplanes have paid a pretty high bill. Don't ever forget they belong to someone," he said.
Around 1 a.m., Pvt. Connell and the others were back at their Fort Myer barracks. Most returned to their rooms and collapsed in their bunks. Pvt. Connell lingered downstairs by a pool table, thinking about the anonymous soldier whose body he had escorted. The mission had gone smoothly. "We practice enough you don't have to think. It is all muscle memory," he said.
But then he felt pangs of guilt combined with fear at the prospect of joining a war that suddenly seemed very real. "My conscience tells me I should be over there, but I am here," he said. "To be honest I'd be terrified to go over there. I'd do it if I was told to."
Write to Greg Jaffe at greg.jaffe@wsj.com5
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108561208790422368,00.html
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