From Military.com:
“Families of Fallen Troops Often
Face Their Hardest Battle Alone”
At the height of the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan, then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey, Jr., grew
increasingly concerned that something was terribly wrong in how the Army dealt
with the families of the fallen. As a Gold Star son, he had personal experience.
His father, Army Maj. Gen. George W. Casey, Sr., was killed in a helicopter
crash in July 1970 while commanding the 1st Cavalry Division in Vietnam. He was
the highest-ranking officer killed in action in that war. As chief of staff in
2007, Casey was hearing it from the families. In visits to bases with his wife,
Sheila, he said that "every place we went we met with groups of survivors.
The feedback we got, and this was six years into the war ... all we're doing is
casualty assistance." Casualty assistance officers would make the knock on
the door to inform of the death, funeral arrangements would be made, and phone
numbers for assistance would be handed out. "Women, especially the younger
ones, were being thrust into these positions where they had to make all kinds
of long-term financial decisions, and there was no support, there was no
help," Casey said. At a Pentagon event, Casey said he heard it in detail
from Donna Engeman, whose husband, Army Chief Warrant Officer 4 John W.
Engeman, was killed by an improvised explosive device in Baghdad in 2006. She
told him how hard it was to get answers out of the casualty assistance
officers, how hard it was to deal with the bureaucracies of the Army and the
Department of Veterans Affairs on benefits, Casey said. "We didn't have a
way to get more immediate and direct feedback from our survivors to allow us to
shape our policies correctly," he said. He decided to form an advisory
board of survivors and enlisted Engeman to be part of it. The advisory board
grew into the current Army Survivor Advisory Working Group, or SAWG. a panel of
12 survivors who meet regularly with the Army chief of staff to provide
guidance on survivor assistance. The work of the group was instrumental in
changing Army policy on a range of issues, from extending training for casualty
assistance officers from one to three days and granting longer bereavement
leaves for soldiers, to giving military families more leeway before having to
make a permanent change of station move. The SAWG was also influential to the
2008 creation of Army Survivor Outreach Services to provide support
coordinators and financial counselors on a continuing basis to families,
regardless of the circumstances of a soldier's death. Army Col. Steve Lewis,
the current chief of the Army's Family Programs Branch, said the goal was to
provide a "continuum of support" for the survivors, beginning with
the casualty assistance officers who will then coordinate with an Army civilian
or contractor from Survivor Outreach Services. Under the program, the Survivor
Outreach Services civilian will relay case management information to the SAWG
to enable the panel "to understand issues and concerns that come
forward" to be taken to Army leadership, Lewis said. But the issues are
constantly evolving. A 2016 study by the Center for the Study of Traumatic
Stress at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences discussed a
new clinical term: persistent complex bereavement disorder, or PCBD. PCBD is
similar to post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, and has been found to
affect 7-15% of family members going through bereavement, according to the
study.
He'll Be 27 Forever
At the Association of the U.S.
Army's convention last month, three women -- Candace Martin, Jane Horton and
Col. Rebecca Eggers -- were honored for their work with SAWG. Martin brought a
unique perspective to the task. As a member of the Army reserves and National
Guard, she once made the dreaded knock on the door to notify a family of a
death. Four months later came the knock on her own door. She was at Fort Sam
Houston in Texas when the call came to help in notifying a family. "You
don't want to do it," she said, but "a lot of our names will end up
on a duty roster. I was told to report to the casualty office and I thought
'Why me?'" "That was the last thing I wanted to do because I just
didn't think that I could do it" in the manner that the family deserved,
she said. However, "after I got involved with the family, I was so
confident that I was the right person for that job to help this young widow get
through making those tough decisions and being the conduit between the military
and her and her little boy," Martin said. "It was the most prideful
moment I had, and I think I served them well." At the time, the training
for a notification officer was one day. "It's now been expanded to three
days. The training's been changed because of the SAWG. That's just one of the
avenues where the SAWG did make a difference," she said. Four months
later, in October 2007, Martin herself had to be notified. Her son, Army 1st
Lt. Tom Martin, had been killed in action in Iraq. "He was 27; he'll be 27
forever," she said. Tom Martin had enlisted out of high school and later
was accepted at West Point, graduating in 2005. He deployed to Iraq out of Fort
Richardson, Alaska, and was part of the troop surge in 2007, Martin said. "He
believed in what he was doing, and I believed in what he was doing, so that
keeps me going to know that he didn't die in vain," she said. "When
the time came, when they knocked on our door that Sunday morning, it was just a
blur. I remember two officers coming to the door. I don't remember either of
their names. I don't even remember what they looked like -- one was a chaplain,
one was an officer," she said. "But it was so surreal that this can't
be happening to our family," she said. "This happens to other
families, not our family, and I remember thinking that our family would never
be the same." "But I also remember thinking that the Army's going to
get this right, because I had been on the delivery end" as a notification
officer herself, Martin said. "I knew what care and compassion was behind
those knocks at the door." Jane Horton said she was with a friend at home
baking cakes in a jar to be sent to her husband, Army Spc. Chistopher Horton,
26, of Collinsville, Oklahoma, when the knock on the door came. "He always
wanted to serve," she said. "He was one of those guys that knew that
his country needed him, that we were at war. And he didn't want to grow old one
day and tell his kids and grandkids that his country was at war and he didn't
step up to the plate and serve." Then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno
came to the funeral, she said. She later wrote to Odierno, and he met with her
in Washington on a Saturday. "I told him of personal things that could
have been better" in the way of Army assistance, Horton said. "He
asked me to be on [SAWG], so I've been on it seven years now." Members of
SAWG don't provide direct assistance to families, Horton said, but instead
"come up with policy changes and find systematic issues and better ways to
serve the survivor community." "I think we all talk to individual
survivors," Rebecca Eggers said, "but our work on the SAWG is to
change the policies." "There are spouses with children who have to
worry about when a child turns 18 -- what happens to your benefit, what happens
to your Social Security? So that's really lately what I've been advocating for
-- how do we prepare families for these changes as they come along as their
children age," Eggers said. Her husband, Capt. Daniel Eggers, 28, of Cape
Coral, Florida, with the 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne) out of Fort Bragg,
North Carolina, was leading a convoy near Kandahar, Afghanistan, on May 29,
2004. He was killed when his vehicle hit a landmine, according to the Defense
Department. When the knock on the door came, it was answered by her oldest son
John, who was five years old at the time, "so it was pretty traumatic for
him," Eggers said. "I was actually napping with our youngest son,
Billy, who was three, and that's pretty much how my life changed." In her
work with SAWG, Eggers said "most of the things I've championed" have
been for the stabilization of members of the military who have had a death in
the family. "We were having soldiers at the time who would be placed on
orders to move less than a year out" from the time of death, she said. When
a spouse or a child is killed, "you're not supposed to be making decisions
within the first year," she said. "You're asking someone to pick up
their life and move -- the Army just needed to do better."
Not Enough Research on Military
Deaths
Among the findings in the 2016
National Military Bereavement Study was that not enough was known about the
unique aftereffects for survivors who must cope with the death of a family
member serving in an all-volunteer force, whatever the circumstances. Military
deaths are different than civilian deaths, and "there is a lack of
substantive research on the impact of the death of a family member serving in
the U.S. military," according to the study by the Center for the Study of
Traumatic Stress at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. However,
the findings were that "bereavement leads to increased vulnerability to
physical illnesses, and psychological conditions," such as depression and
anxiety, according to the study team led by Dr. Stephen Cozza, associate
director of CSTS. "Surviving members of military families may offer a
unique perspective to understanding grief," the study said. "From the
initial distress of notification to longer-term challenges, family members face
difficult emotional and practical issues possibly related to distinctive
characteristics of military death," it added. The study included quotes
from anonymous survivors whose reactions ranged from the bitter to the
reflective. "My son took his own life. I'm angry with him. I'm angry with
the military. I'm angry at everyone. I no longer fly the American flag. I feel
utterly alone," said one. Another said: "I have come to realize he
was doing what he wanted to do at the time of his death. It was the path he
chose. Over time his death has taught me to be grateful and more appreciative
of my family, friends, and my life." In an article earlier this year on
the website of the Military Health System, Cozza, a psychiatrist and former
Army colonel, said that "we should never expect grief to disappear." "But
over time, we do expect grief to find its rightful place in someone's life so
that there also can be opportunities for people to live in productive and
joyful ways," he said. "Some people, however, may have ongoing
difficulty adapting to grief," Cozza said. "People can continue to be
so preoccupied with the death that they're unable to find happiness or engage
in the world or in social interactions." Military deaths are
"different," said Bonnie Carroll, founder and head of the Tragedy
Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), although she questioned whether there
was a lack of research on the impact for families. "A tremendous amount of
research" has been done by the American Psychological Association, other
organizations and also in doctoral dissertations by members of TAPS, said
Carroll, a retired major in the Air Force Reserves. "As a society, as a
culture, we have to recognize that those who stepped forward to serve their
country do something absolutely extraordinary on behalf of our entire
population, and however they died, whenever they died," their lives should
be remembered, Carroll said. "Death in the military is unlike any
other," added Carroll, whose husband, Army Brig. Gen. Tom Carroll, died in
a C-12 plane crash in 1992. The goal of TAPS is "to provide service
delivery in the area of care-based emotional support and resolution of
grief," she said. TAPS now has more 90,000 surviving military family
members and, with 19 more bereaved family members finding the organization each
day, Carroll said. Last year, TAPS took in 6,020 new surviving family members.
'Life Moved On for Everybody'
At the core of TAPS work is a
nationwide network of peer support counsellors and trainers who work directly
with survivors and with each of the service branches. Many of them come with
their own experience of military loss, such as Chantel Dooley, director of
impact assessments for TAPS. She was engaged to "the most gorgeous man in
the world" — Capt. Alex Stanton, a special agent with the Air Force Office
of Special Investigations at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona. He was killed in a
motorcycle accident on Sept. 30, 2016. After his death, "every single
airman in his detachment just made this beautiful little cocoon right around
me. They took such good care of me right after the loss but after Alex was laid
to rest, it was like life moved on for everybody except me," Dooley said. On
May 27, 2017, Memorial Day, she was at Alex's gravesite at Arlington National
Cemetery. It was supposed to have been their wedding day. A counsellor from
TAPS found her and made contact. "It was such a healing experience or
me," she said. August Cabrera, now beginning her own work with TAPS, said
her involvement with the organization came about through the persistence of a
TAPS counsellor who wouldn't give up on her. She recalled the denial and anger
that consumed her when she learned of the death on Oct. 29, 2011 of her
husband, 41-year-old Army Lt. Col. David Cabrera, the first military social
worker killed in action. A suicide bomber in a vehicle packed with explosives
had rammed into his NATO armored vehicle in Afghanistan's Kabul province,
setting off a blast that killed 17, including four other U.S. service members.
Cabrera had been in country less than 30 days. August Cabrera said she was out
back in her Texas home, talking on the phone and raking leaves. She saw the
casualty team approaching. She dropped the phone and the rake, and met them in
the driveway. "Ma'am, can we please go inside?" She responded
"No, just tell me. Is he hurt or is he dead? Hurt I can fix. I can't fix
dead. Just tell me." They asked her again to go inside. Again, she refused
-- just tell me. One of the officers began the set speech. "The Secretary
of the Army regrets to inform..." Cabrera said "I interrupted them.
Don't you dare tell me what the Secretary of the Army thinks." "Then
I collapsed. So I never got the knock on the door," she said. At first,
she was overwhelmed with guilt at the thought that his death may have been her
fault. He had told her that he might be calling that night when he could get a
high-speed internet connection in Kabul. She though he may have been rushing
back to Kabul to make the connection when the suicide bomber struck. Army
officers serving with Cabrera later assured her that the convoy had been
heading out of Kabul to a forward operating base. "He was doing what he
loved," Cabrera said of her husband. "He really wanted to go where he
needed to be." At her husband's burial in Arlington National Cemetery, a
woman approached after the ceremony, Cabrera said. The woman said she had
served in Afghanistan when David Cabrera was there. The woman told her "I
want you to know your husband saved my life. If it wasn't for him, I would have
killed himself." She had been a patient of Cabrera's in Afghanistan. Cabrera
said she held it together for her two boys but at night she would lay on the
kitchen floor, sobbing and drinking wine. A peer mentor from TAPS kept trying
to call. "She called and called and I blew her off," Cabrera said. One
night -- she estimated that it was two or three in the morning -- she picked up
the phone and the peer mentor "loved on me through the phone." She
went back to school and earned a masters in fine arts. "Now I'm a peer
mentor for TAPS," Cabrera said. Cabrera used the word "forever,"
and so did Bonnie Carroll and Gen. Casey, in describing the commitment that the
nation owes to the families of the fallen. "It is forever," Casey
said. "It is forever."
^ As the article states what the surviving
family members have to go through when their loved one, who served in the US
Military, dies isn’t known by the majority of Americans. I have not personally
had to go through this and so can not fully understand the experience, but I
have had close friends go through it and seen all the hardships they have
suffered. It is hard enough to deal with the death of a loved one in general
and that becomes even worse when you have to constantly “fight” different Government
Departments and Agencies (ie. the US Military, the VA, etc.) to get basic answers
and the help you are entitled to. It seems that there are many programs and
laws that are on the books to help the surviving family members of a deceased
soldiers, but many are there only on paper and to get any actual answers or
help you have to know how to use the loopholes or spend every waking minute “fighting”
these different agencies to get what you are already entitled to. This seems to
be an un-written Federal Government rule: have laws and programs to help, but
make sure that only those who make it their crusade to get the help actually
get the help. That system needs to be completely changed. You always hear about
the great sacrifice that the men and women who protected our country by serving
and have since died made, but you hear little to nothing about their surviving family
members or the up-hill battle they will face for months if not years to get any
real assistance from the Federal Government that promised the help. ^
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