Wife learns husband killed in action from Facebook?

Gold Star wife learns of husband’s death through Facebook
APRIL 13TH, 2012
OUTSIDE THE WIRE
POSTED BY JOE GOULD

The wife of a Fort Carson, Colo., staff sergeant killed in Afghanistan said she learned of his death when soldier from his unit posted on her Facebook page that there was an emergency.

“I was told via Facebook,” said Ariell Taylor-Brown told a local NBC affiliate. “It was a girl in his platoon. She wrote to me and told me to call her immediately.”

The move short circuited the military’s solemn and sacrosanct casualty notification process and broke a staunchly defended taboo. Taylor-Brown called her, and the soldier told her of the death. Taylor-Brown, who has two children and is pregnant with the couple’s third was at home alone with the kids.

“She told me over the phone, right in front of my kids and I completely had a meltdown. She wasn’t supposed to but I guess she took it on her own power to do it,” she said.

Hours later, two soldiers arrived at her home in Mobile, Ala., but she knew about it already. Protocol dictates the Army is the first to notify the family through messengers who come to the house.
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Wife Learns Of Soldier's Death Via Text, Facebook; Outrage Or The Future?
By Colin Clark
Published: April 17, 2012

We're all about social media here at AOL Defense so we would usually applaud the use of Facebook or similar to make the lives of the military better or easier.

But the respected Spouse Buzz website reports that a military spouse was notified of her husband's death via a text message and Facebook by people in her husband's unit, before the Army could reach her.

Megan Born, 22, learned Thursday first from a text message and then from a Facebook post that her husband, Sgt. Joshua Born had been killed in action earlier that day. Although her husband was stationed at Fort Stewart, Ga., Megan had moved home to Olive Branch, Ill. for the deployment.

For those of us who talk with, eat with and sometimes live with members of the military, this would seem to violate everything the military tries to achieve through use of its highly ritualized and carefully designed means of notifying next of kin of the death or serious wounding of a loved one. On top of handling the notification with as much care and dignity as possible, there can be operational security reasons for keeping the information quiet. It doesn't seem to have been the case here, but you never know.
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