Sobs and Silence at Memorial for Soldiers at Washington Base

[Rose Siding]

...The box arrived at the house near this military base a few days before Dec. 25. It was a delivery that might have offered Stephanie VanKomen some proof, if only imagined, that her husband would be coming back to watch her open them. But he was not coming back: On that same day, 30 minutes before the postman came with presents, the Army came to tell her he was dead.

He was Staff Sgt. Darren D. VanKomen, 33, one of six soldiers stationed here at Fort Lewis and killed on Dec. 21 in an attack on an Army mess hall in Mosul, Iraq that claimed the lives of 22 people, including 8 other soldiers, and wounded 60. The six Fort Lewis soldiers, the youngest 21 and the oldest 47, all members of the fort's elite high-tech Stryker Brigade, were honored here Wednesday at a military memorial service.

Inside a cavernous gymnasium that echoed with sobs or was hushed in weighty silence, soldiers cried for them and commanders remembered them. At the end of the hourlong ceremony, relatives got up from their blue plastic chairs and moved toward a row of small podiums....
The families lingered there, took in the high honors, in a daze and before a large crowd, and walked on. Then they stepped solemnly back into their worlds of private grief, back to staring at the unopened Christmas presents, re-reading the last e-mail messages.....
...
"Dear Mom, I don't need any crazy emotional stuff coming back at me after this, O.K.?" he wrote. "I just want to say that I love you. I know I'm not the nicest son in the world....But I do love you and I do realize what a difficult time it was trying to provide for us growing up, so no matter how cold I am sometimes, just know that I still care and you're still my mom. Love, Robert."

http://nytimes.com/2004/12/30/national/30memorial.html

[GetTheRightVote]

1. I cry to much these days reading articles like this

:kick:

[Solly Mack]

2. If America does not exact justice from Bush for very single

death his arrogance has brought, then America stands no chance.

EVERY death.

[fooj]

3. my heart breaks for our soldiers and their families...

We owe them more than this! I feel so ashamed......

WHAT ARE THEY HIDING????

[barbaraann]

4. I had to drive under that I-5 overpass where all the flag wavers gather

by Ft. Lewis. It was SO SAD. They were waving those flags like they would get the dead back and heal the wounded if they waved hard enough.