Susan threw me a bone today.  It was a story that was from the ranks of the “military affected” and she found it and gave it to me to do military justice by.  I hope you can find the time to read the story linked above, perhaps the rest of us can show Mark and the Maida family some of the respect and thoughtfulness that has long been due them.  I have done my best on this diary but it is far from the best that this soldier gave for his countrymen who he fought alongside to protect.  He didn’t choose the war and he didn’t choose the mission but everybody who knew him claims he chose to keep his fellow Americans as safe as he could while they all preformed this NOBLE CAUSE IN IRAQ.

Doing all that he could to keep fellow American soldiers safe was what kept Mark Maida in Iraq and stopped him from fighting his stop-loss hard enough to win and leave. This is the tale of our real American Heros and they have precious little in common with W. Bush other than they also breathe.

Mark’s family has been subjected to a military nightmare and I can’t even tell you how it has come about, but I can tell you how things are supposed to be handled when they send our sons and daughters and husbands and wives into harms way.  I can tell you what they tell us they will do to take care of all of us if we are unfortunate enough to have our loved ones killed in Iraq.

First came news that their son, Mark Maida, a 22-year-old Army sergeant, was killed in Iraq by a roadside bomb on May 26. Then, a week after his death, the Army gave only hours’ notice that the body would be arriving at Gen. Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee, forcing the grieving family into a frantic scramble to retrieve it for a funeral two days later.

I have no way of knowing if they had requested to tend to their son’s funeral.  Because he was killed under stop loss orders they may have chosen to disengage from the services that the Army provides fallen soldiers and their family.  If they had not requested the Army to disengage,  Mark’s body was to have been physically escorted to them by a designated officer.  If they wanted to handle Mark’s funeral completely themselves then the Casualty Area Command was to have been handling the schedule and flight route for Mark’s body and his parents were to have had notification of that schedule when Mark’s body began transport as per Army Regulation 638-2 Chapter 11 Section 24a.

The biggest disgrace I personally found in Mark’s family’s story was the way in which they discovered the details of his death.  They had to read about what had happened to him in the Washington Post.  Mark was deployed out of Ft. Irwin.  It is odd to have troops from Ft. Irwin deployed.  Ft. Irwin is where the National Training Center is located. Before this real war was started, NTC is where your soldiers used to go usually yearly to play war games.  The troops posted at Ft. Irwin did nothing but fight faux wars with all of our different Army units through out the U.S.  They had a reputation for the being the best of the best because they “fought” all the time and they tended to get good at it….at least good at the kind of fighting that our military has been designed to fight.  It kind of threw all of us in the Army for a bit of a loop when we discovered they were going to deploy troops out of Ft. Irwin. It hadn’t been a deployable post until George and Iraq appeared in our military lives.  It was a training post unaccustomed and improperly outfitted to travel and ship equipment and personnel to fight wars in other parts of the world.  Troops in the past had lost their lives at Ft. Irwin during training exercises and war games.  It may be faux but it is still dangerous.  When troops die at Ft. Irwin the command is also in training there and letters are written by the fallen’s platoon leader, troop or unit commander, and their battalion commander.  These letters detail what happened and how it happened among other things that those individuals may feel they need to express to that soldiers next of kin.  So commanders who trained constantly on how to preform war time Army procedures did none of what was supposed to be done for Mark and his family after he gave his life in a real war.  Such letters are described in Army Regulation 600-8-1 Chapter 5.

I can understand their pain as mail and personal affects continue to return.  I am not sure how that can be handled better when the troops are on the ground fighting in the same area that they are attempting to collect his belongings and return them.  I know how pain and grief can be triggered when we lose people before their time as I have experienced that kind of grieving for my Uncle these past months.  I think that the pain of his returning belongings and mail would be less severe if Mark had been properly honored and cared for in his death, and if he wouldn’t have lost his life under stop loss.  The lack of concern and responsibility displayed toward Mark in death will always mar the surface of his loss, and those wounds will scar. I don’t believe that there is any way for them not to scar because the wounds have become  infected now.

I have spent the entire morning attempting to find out who Mark’s Casualty Area Command or CAC was, but like everything else since Bush has put his Administration in office…..that information seems very difficult to come by.  It becomes very difficult to make anybody accountable when you can’t even find out who is responsible for certain responsibilities clearly outlined in the Army’s own regulations.