Some of the war's battles are fought at home

Some of the war's battles are fought at home
Families left behind when loved ones are deployed have found deepening support at Camp Pendleton.
By Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times
November 25, 2011

Marines and family members pay their respects at a Camp Pendleton ceremony for 17 Marines killed in action in Afghanistan. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times / November 4, 2011)

Reporting from Camp Pendleton— Six-year-old Keegan Ramirez knows that his father, Marine Sgt. Rafael Ramirez, is in Afghanistan.

But there is nothing unusual about that. The Ramirez family lives in base housing, where nearly all the fathers and some of the mothers leave home regularly for seven to 12 months at a stretch.

Sgt. Ramirez, 27, is with an artillery battalion in the Taliban stronghold of Helmand province. He has made three other deployments to Iraq to the insurgent-battleground of Anbar province.

Recently, Keegan has come to understand an inescapable fact about his father's chosen profession: Not everyone comes home alive or uninjured.

"We hadn't heard from his father in a couple of days," said Keegan's mother, Emma Ramirez, "and Keegan came to me one night and asked, 'Did daddy die?' It broke my heart."

Children have had to grow up quickly in the last decade at Camp Pendleton.
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