National Guard increases casualty notification training

Guard increases casualty notification training

By David Mercer - The Associated Press
Posted : Sunday May 3, 2009 17:41:59 EDT

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — A few miles outside a small town in Illinois’ farm country, the chaplain driving Capt. Jon Cape to one of the toughest assignments of the young officer’s career pulled the car over to pray.

Cape made a simple request of God: To grant him courage as he knocked on the door of the military wife who was about to learn she was a new widow.

She answered the door. And he began, “The Secretary of the Army has asked me to express his deepest regret. ...”

“She didn’t believe it; she was kind of in shock, didn’t think it was happening to her,” said Cape, an Iraq war veteran and Illinois National Guardsman. “Of course, (she was) going through the denial phase — No this isn’t happening. Are you sure, are you positive...?”

Cape, 28, learned about such reactions months before in a training session.

That training is part of the National Guard’s new push in at least a dozen states to prepare more soldiers to deliver the news that a soldier died and to help the family in the months afterward. More soldiers are being killed with the heavy demand on guard units fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. And there are plans to send more troops to increasingly dangerous Afghanistan this year.

Since combat began in Afghanistan in late 2001, 85 National Guard soldiers have been killed there, including 12 from Illinois. All but one were members of the state’s 33rd Infantry Brigade, whose nearly 3,000 soldiers have been in Afghanistan since last fall. In Iraq, 436 National Guard soldiers have died since that war began in 2003, 15 from Illinois.

The casualty figures are far higher than anything the guard is used to dealing with.
go here for more
Guard increases casualty notification training