GRIEF FROM A WAR: Dealing with the pain

Families and soldiers still wrestling with Iraq deaths

— Staff Sgt. Stacey Brandon opened the lime green Army-issue notebook he used as a journal and jotted down the day's thoughts before climbing into bed at a dusty outpost north of Baghdad.

It was a new habit, one the 35-year-old father of two was trying to keep since arriving in Iraq about two weeks earlier.

Brandon picked up a black ink pen and in neat rows of curly script wrote the date - April 23, 2004 - and mused about wanting to call his wife and missing his kids. He signed off with a thought different from previous days: "Jesus Christ saved my soul."

Shortly before dawn on April 24, Brandon and three others lay dead, sliced apart by the shearing metal of a 57mm rocket fired by insurgents into Camp Taji, base camp of Arkansas' 39th Infantry Brigade. Seven soldiers were seriously wounded in the attack.

Brandon was one of 137 U.S. troops - including seven from Arkansas' 39th - who died that April, which to this day remains the single deadliest month in Iraq for both the nation and the state.

Now, five years later, the number of troops with Arkansas roots killed in Iraq and Afghanistan has reached 75, according to unofficial tallies kept by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

The casualty counts from World War II, Korea and Vietnam dwarf those from this latest war - July 1950 in Korea alone saw 50 Arkansas deaths - but the results are the same. Death comes in a second to one person, forever changing the troops who lived and the family left at home.

War Casualties Arkansas servicemen deaths

The years have been marked by haunting regrets of widows, guilt of soldiers who survived and memories that play like slide shows in their minds.

Even today, that last journal entry gnaws at Brandon's widow, April. Her husband's declaration of faith brings her some solace, but the rest of the entry fuels a bonfire of regret that time hasn't extinguished.

She wishes she hadn't acted so brave when she said goodbye to him and that she'd kissed him longer. Did he know how much she loved him and needed him?

Would he have called her that night if she had e-mailed him that she recharged his prepaid phone card with more minutes? Worried he'd burn through the minutes too fast, she'd hesitated to tell him - a regret that weighs as heavily as the memory of that last kiss.

"How could I care about that? About minutes on a phone card? Did he know how much I loved him?" she said last week, tears rolling down her face as she sat at her kitchen table with her husband's journal open in front of her.

She knew death was a possibility. But April Brandon truly believed her husband would come home alive - a belief shared by soldiers and families alike in the days leading up to the deployment.

Maj. Gen. Ron Chastain, now the former 39th commander, wrote in his deployment journal that "The timing of the 39th [brigade's] arrival into Iraq was terrible. The news of the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison upset many of the Iraqis. Some of our convoys had to fight their way into Baghdad."

Sgt. 1st Class William Labadie, 45, died in a mortar attack April 7, the day after he arrived at Camp Taji. Sgt. Felix Delgreco, 22, was fatally shot in his gun turret April 9 while searching for the mortar team responsible for Labadie's death.

The deaths of four soldiers from one rocket on April 24, however, sent shock waves through the entire brigade. Capt. Arthur "Bo" Felder, 36, Chief Warrant Officer Pat Kordsmeier, 49, Staff Sgt. Billy Orton, 41, and Brandon were all leaders in Headquarters Company of the 39th's Support Battalion. Their jobs were primarily supporting those fighting out on the line, yet they all diedat the mouth of a bunker in the heart of an Army post, where logic would indicate they were safe.

"I knew the mission must go on," Chastain wrote that day. "I had to give the impression that I was not badly shaken by this."

But he quietly began to wonder just how many of his soldiers would die in the year to come.

On April 25, Sgt. Kenny Melton became the seventh soldier from the 39th killed that month when a roadside bomb packed with ball bearings exploded near Sadr City.

"Unless you were there, you do not realize what a tough year it was for our soldiers operating in that environment," Chastain said.

The 39th lost 33 soldiers during its first 12-month deployment to Iraq with the 1st Cavalry Division from April 2004-March 2005.

"I intentionally don't dwell on it," Chastain said last week about the troops he lost. "I do think about it and not just April 24, but throughout the year I think of all the soldiers we've lost."

SURVIVORS

Families and soldiers alike often struggle with survivor guilt after a wartime death, said Vince Roca, clinical psychologist with the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System in North Little Rock.

"It's the same process; families were traumatized, too," he said. "Trauma is a subjective event."

Feelings of doubt and wondering whether death could have been prevented is a common reaction, Roca said. Feeling guilty, however, can manifest in actually believing they're guilty of something.

The thought, "Could I have done something different," can turn into "I should have done something different," and that is when a person begins to believe they are responsible for something that was out of their control, Roca said.

It can lead to anger and thoughts of suicide, he warned.

"You hear that time heals all wounds?" Roca said. "Time heals nothing. It's the living that takes place in the passage of time that matters. Either healing occurs or hurt intensifies."

April Brandon and Margarita Orton know that all too well.

They talk openly about thejourney they've been on these past five years, about the craziness, the sadness and the bad decisions. These women are just now moving on, finally able to see their futures through the haze of grief that for years clouded their judgment and their lives.

"I have a lot of problem with regrets," April Brandon said. "I was mad at myself for a long time."

Now she hopes she can help others with what she's overcome and is involved with various groups of widows and families of fallen troops.

Margarita Orton is learning to appreciate her new life and the person she has become. She drives now and goes to college.

"I know for sure, if this hadn't happened, I wouldn't be doing those things," she said while decorating her husband's grave in Hazen on the anniversary of his death. "But still, this is something not to wish on anyone, not even your worst enemy."

APRIL 24, 2004

It was just about 5 a.m. when the rocket hit the bunker packed with Headquarters Company, 39th Support Battalion soldiers. A barrage had landed about 20 minutes earlier, sending everyone for cover in concrete bunkers.

The final rocket hit one of the bunkers just as soldiers began to emerge, thinking it was over.

Cries for help broke the darkness. Dead and wounded soldiers covered the area, and medics went to work.

Chastain went straight to the brigade operations center after the rocket hit that morning. He was looking at the radar, trying to pinpoint where the rockets were fired from so he could send troops out to find the men responsible.

"Later I thought, perhaps I should have gone to assist the casualties, rather than trying to find and destroy the ones that fired the rockets," he said. "It did not seem fair. Our soldiers were properly trained and equipped. They were doing the right thing. Yet, the inaccurate enemy rocket fire defied the odds, not hitting the targeted airfield, instead killing our soldiers."

Col. Allen Hargis, Support Battalion commander, was one bunker over from the impact. He can still see the searing white light of the rocket explosion and hearthe deafening boom. A few feet one way or the other and it would have hit Hargis' group, too.

He's thought about that a lot over the years.

"It just wasn't our turn ...wasn't our turn," he said.

Hargis placed another officer in charge of the company and helped them stand back up on their feet.

"We carried on the mission and we did it in a way to honor them," he said. "It's easier when you've got a reason to move on."

That day seems like yesterday to Hargis. Loud noises still startle him, a lingering symptom of the day's trauma.

"Now, when I think about it, it puts a perspective on life and the importance of men to be willing to serve their country at great costs," he said. "I've got a real peace about it."

Peace has not come easy for Felder's mother, Cheryl Felder Stuart.

Maj. Mark Anderson learned his friend Bo Felder was dead when he got the call from Camp Robinson telling him to go notify Felder's family.

He was still in shock when he pulled up to Stuart's house.

"I don't think the shock left until months later," he said. "He was larger than life to me."

Anderson ignored his own grief to be strong for Felder's family as he imagined his friend Bo would be if the tables were turned.

Felder was Stuart's oldest child who became the head of the household early in life when she was widowed. For the first few years after his death, she was angry. Now she's mostly sad.

"I find myself in bed sometimes, 24 hours," she said from her Lewisville home. "I don't think anybody ... I don't think we can really explain it to you where you understand. It's just new every day in our life. It's there, it's all around us. It's still so much alive, this grief."

Stuart has always been against the war, but she's learning to live with her son's choice.

"I'm learning to let it go," she said, breaking into tears. "Life goes on."

There were no hugs the day Margarita Orton was told her husband was dead.

She yelled at the men when they came to her door in crisp uniforms, before they even said a word. She told them to leave. She didn't want to hear that Billy Joe Orton, the American soldier she'd fallen in love with all those years ago in her native Panama City, Panama, was never coming home again.

The news snowballed into chaos.

A month or so after burying her husband, Margarita received word that his legs, blown off in the attack, were recovered. Like many Arkansas families, she had to decide whether to bury the body parts with the rest of her husband's body.

"We opened up the grave and put them in," Orton said, matterof-factly. "I just wanted everything to be together."

Then she faced possible deportation.

Margarita was married to an American, but was still considered an "alien citizen" by the U.S. government. She didn't know what would happen; she didn't know if she could legally stay. The three boys she had with Billy Joe were all under 12 years old then.

She successfully navigated the citizenship process later that year.

Margarita talks about those years openly.

"I feel like I'm losing my mind a little bit sometimes," she said. "I'd lost it back then."

Like many widows, she and April Brandon both struggled with money decisions after receiving the $500,000 in survivor benefits. Laden with guilt, Margarita Orton gave most of the money away to family, friends, scams and charities.

"I don't think they should have given us that money all at once," Margarita Orton said. "You're not thinking right. Now that my brain is more together, I have a list of people to help, but I can't."

April Brandon thought back on her own money decisions.

"You think you wouldn't make those decisions. We think we're smarter than that, but we're not the best decision-makers at the time," April Brandon said.

Now they both live comfortably on monthly Social Security and VA benefit checks and concentrate on raising their kids. Helping the children through grief is something these women will continue for years.

The Brandon children were just 4 and 18 months old when their father died.

Brianna, now 6, has no memory of her father beyond what she sees in photo albums. Johnathan struggled in the first year of losing his dad. The 4-year-old would tell everyone he met that his dad was "blown up by a rocket."

At memorial services and military functions, he'd ask his mom, "Is this where I get a new daddy?"

April Brandon wrote her worries about the kids in her husband's journal that year. She'd drive the two hours from Hazen to his grave in Kingsland to read the entries at her husband's grave. Sharing her worries made it easier - and still does today.

"I told him, 'I don't know how heaven works,'" she said, laughing at herself as she sat beside his grave last week. "I don't know if he can hear me, I don't know why it makes me feel better. It just does."

April Brandon struggled to move on from her grief in 2006 by marrying a soldier who served with her husband in Iraq. It lasted less than a year.

"It didn't keep him alive, did it?" Roca said, recognizing the pattern of grief upon hearing about her brief marriage. "No one's blaming the intentions. They are about self-care. But intentions are never good enough."

April Brandon quit writing in the journal for a couple of years, and only recently opened it back up. Even now, it's a comfort to her.

"Look at this," she said, pinching together the pages she'd filled, considerably more than her husband's.

"He just wasn't there very long," she said, staring at the pages between her fingers.

E TROOP

A small picture, faded by time, stands out on the neat bookshelf in Maj. Derald Neugebauer's office at Camp Robinson.

Five smiling men peer out from the plastic frame as they show off a shipment of Girl Scout cookies received in their last days at Fort Polk, La., shortly before they left for Iraq.

Neugebauer, former commander of the 39th's E Troop, 151 Cavalry Regiment, is one of those faces.

Sgt. 1st Class William Labadie is another.

Less than a month later, Labadie was gone.

Neugebauer thinks of his lost soldiers every morning as he slips onto his left wrist the metal band with their names etched on it.

Labadie was the first 39th soldier to die in Iraq, killed by a mortar round while he was unpacking a truck and moving into the trailer he was to call home.

Neugebauer remembers thelook in the eyes of some of his troops after Labadie had been evacuated to a hospital.

"I think we all knew, we just wanted to hope that he was alive," he said in hindsight.

Delgreco died in an ambush two days later, on the first mission in search of the men responsible for the mortar attack that killed Labadie.

Delgreco was a Connecticut National Guard soldier assigned to the troop. But it made no difference to Neugebauer.

"About a third of the brigade was from somewhere other than Arkansas," he said. "They're your responsibility in the end, no matter where they're from."

He pushed out his troops in search of those responsible again and again as ordered, keeping the men motivated to help them work through the grief.

"There's not really any words for it," he said. "You have a job to do, a job to prevent further losses, so you have to focus."

Then, when a third E Troop soldier died in December, within two months of the brigade's return home, Neugebauer began to wonder, "Can I make it to February?"

He pushed that fear deep within, refusing to dwell on it.

It all caught up to Neugebauer about 18 months after returning home. He found himself depressed, angry. And finally faced it.

"The reality set in," he said. "There's not a day that goes by, every morning I think about those guys."

He visited Delgreco's and the third soldier's mothers shortly after returning home. The look in their eyes, the recognition of that loss, hit him hard.

"I felt guilty that I'm the reason she won't see her son again," he said. "Ultimately it's out of your control, though. You're out there but you're not in that fight with them at the time. You can't help them dodge that bullet."

BRAVO COMPANY

It was supposed to be a quick mission to the Green Zone to do some paperwork on April 25.

Maj. Clay Young, 3rd Battalion executive officer, was headed there with the battalion commander's personal security team - a hodgepodge of soldiers from all companies in the battalion.

The battalion was camping out at an old amusement park, Baghdad Island, on the northern edge of the city. It was a cool, dewy morning. Bravo Company was awake and drinking coffee as the sun rose over the nearby ponds.

Chaotic voices erupted on the radio, breaking the silence of the morning. Capt. Keith Wilson, then-Bravo Company commander, shot up from his bunk in the radio truck.

There'd been a bomb. Someone was dead.

He jumped when he heard the coded identity. It was one of his guys, Sgt. Kenny Melton. Even now, after a second deployment to Iraq, that moment plays with the reality of a movie in his mind.

Wilson walked to battalion headquarters to confirm what he already knew. Then, with tears in his eyes, he broke the news to the soldiers of Bravo Company.

"I knew it could happen, I thought I knew how tough it would be on myself, I didn't know how tough it actually was," he said.

At the scene, Young's team was checking on the wounded soldiers when they noticed that Melton was still in his turret, and quiet.

He was dead.

Ball bearings from the bomb embedded in the steel of the humvee and Melton's machine gun.

They moved Melton to another truck, called for backup and evacuated to the nearest hospital.

The reality of death, of the war, crashed like a wall into Young and Wilson.

Wilson said simply, "It became real in that moment."

Young doesn't think about that day in detail very often, and never talks about it. But it creeps into his mind every April.

Wilson gets irritated around the anniversary; he feels the same punch in the gut he felt the moment he heard Melton's name that day. So he spends time alone until it passes.

Young retired from the National Guard shortly after returning home from Iraq. The boots he wore the day Melton died are still tucked away in a closet at home.

"I've still got 'em and I don't know why."Jaelun Felder's poem for his father Jaelun Felder was 8 years old when his dad, Capt. Arthur "Bo" Felder died in a rocket attack in Iraq on April 24, 2004. One year later, Jaelun read this poem he wrote to hundreds of people on the steps of the state Capitol.

"My Father the Hero"

By Jaelun Felder

I look into the mirror,

And what do I see.

A reflection of the man

Who once carried me.

Strong, mighty,

And brave as can be.

He lead his men into battle

So that others could be free.

From him I learned

To listen to my inner man

And strive to do

The best that I can.

I will hold my head high

And reach for the stars.

Because one day it maybe

My time to be in charge.

I love you daddy,

Captain Arthur "Bo" Felder Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Front Section, Pages 1, 12 on 05/10/2009

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