Military Families: "A World of Worries"

Newsday (New York)

July 24, 2008 Thursday

A world of worry at home; Even when families learn their loved ones overseas are safe, war's inevitable heartache still takes its toll

BYLINE: BY MARTIN C. EVANS. martin.evans@newsday.com

THE PHONE CALL came early Monday of last week, while Beth Delli-Pizzi was vacationing in Maine and her soldier husband was deployed in Afghanistan near the lawless Pakistan border.
"Did you see the cover of Newsday?" her mother asked. "It says nine guys were killed in Afghanistan."
So began days of anxious phone calls, e-mail inquiries and sweaty-palmed waiting, as relatives and friends of the 160 soldiers from the Bay Shore-based Army National Guard 69th Infantry Regiment sought information that would confirm whether their loved ones were alive or dead.

America's nearly seven years of war in Afghanistan and five in Iraq have bound tightly the friends and relatives of the regiment's recruits. Their home front is a place of worry and anxiety, where a headline or a news report can set off a chain reaction and where information about a loved one is precious.
In the hours after copies of the July 14 edition of Newsday hit Long Island's driveways and front porches - "Attack In Afghanistan/9 U.S. Soldiers Killed" - soldiers' family members called each other to urge calm, offer support and run down rumors.

Friends of the fighting men - U.S. infantry units are all male - wondered what had become of their warrior buddies.
Delli-Pizzi is president of the 69th Infantry's Family Readiness Group, which assists family members whose loved ones are deployed. Hoping for information on who the nine were, she worked her contacts among soldiers in Afghanistan, calling them to inquire about others who could not be reached.
With a few phone calls, Delli-Pizzi was able to determine that the attack had not taken place at a location where most of the Bay Shore unit was stationed.

But she knew that some members of the unit were serving elsewhere in Afghanistan.
That meant that one or more of them might have been at the attack scene, a hostile mountainous region near the Pakistan border. Navy Seal Lt. Michael P. Murphy, of Patchogue, had been killed in those mountains during a 2005 ambush, along with 18 other U.S. sailors and soldiers.

Still, the lack of certainty added to the worry. It was two days after the front page headline scared Delli-Pizzi and the other families before she heard from her husband, Lt. Lou Delli-Pizzi, when he telephoned from Afghanistan. He was safe.
For her, after spending days reassuring her fellow military wives while harboring her own private fears, the wait was finally over.
"You're always on pins and needles until you know for sure," she said.
Government policy often works against the fast flow of information. The U.S. Department of Defense withholds information pertaining to incidents resulting in troop fatalities until the next of kin of all of the dead have been informed, meaning that family members of soldiers who survive fatal incidents may be in the dark for days.

The military also imposes a 24-hour blackout of details following casualty incidents.
But with the pervasiveness of cell phones and Internet connections available to soldiers serving overseas, worried civilians routinely seek assurances from loved ones in real time.

Jean Dudenhoffer, of Islip Terrace, worried for 12 hours about her son Mark Dudenhoffer, until she was able to reach a National Guard buddy of his. The guardsman assured her he had received an e-mail from Mark after the attack.
The dead from the July 13 attack were members of the 503rd Infantry Regiment (Airborne), which had been deployed with the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team, whose home base is in Italy.

The DOD Web site did not post the names of the dead or the unit in which they served until July 16, three days later.
"The worry can go on for days," said Delli-Pizzi, an immigration lawyer from West Islip. "So there were e-mails and calls - 'Have you heard anything, have you heard anything?'"
The deaths in Afghanistan and the delay in critical communications demonstrates how deeply Long Island families are intertwined with the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The unit of the nine soldiers who were killed had been the home unit of Pfc. Jacob Fletcher, of Bay Shore. He was killed during a 2003 bomb attack - the second Long Island soldier to die during the Iraq war.
For Jonathan Rothwell, 28, who knew Fletcher when they grew up in West Islip, last week's uncertainty rekindled anxieties few Long Islanders understand.

He learned of the fatal attack in Afghanistan when a friend called to ask him if he had learned the news.
Rothwell had been deployed to Iraq with the 69th Infantry Regiment in 2004. During that deployment, 19 soldiers were killed. Rothwell had come under attack while serving as a turret gunner when a bomb hit his Humvee, knocking him unconscious. He left the unit this spring.

Last week, he anxiously sought answers to the fates of men with whom he had once gone off to war.
"My stomach dropped," Rothwell said. "You know so many people over there, you just say 'I hope it ain't one of our guys,' even though you hope everybody is safe."

The 9 who died
The soldiers of 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment (Airborne) of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team, were ambushed
July 13.
1st. Lt. Jonathan P. Brostrom
Age 24, Hawaii
Sgt. Israel Garcia
Age 24, Long Beach, Calif.
Cpl. Jonathan R. Ayers
Age 24, Snellville, Ga.
Cpl. Jason M. Bogar
Age 25, Seattle
Cpl. Jason D. Hovater
Age 24, Clinton, Tenn.
Cpl. Matthew B. Phillips
Age 27, Jasper, Ga.
Capt. Pruitt A. Rainey
Age 22, Haw River, N.C.
Pfc. Sergio S. Abad
Age 21, Morganfield, KY.
Cpl. Gunnar W. Zwilling
Age 20, Florissant, Mo. (photo not available)
The Fighting 69th

THE UNIT A famed
New York-based Army National Guard unit made up of volunteers from the five boroughs of New York City and from Long Island. The Long Island companies are posted at the Bay Shore and Huntington armories.
ITS HISTORY The unit's roots go back to the 1840s, when it was made up largely of Irish immigrants. The regiment has served
in four wars and 19 campaigns, including the Civil War, World War I, World War II and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Legend has it that, during a Civil War battle in Virginia, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee gave the regiment its nickname, the Fighting 69th.
RECENT ACTION Nineteen of its members have been killed in fighting in Iraq, where it was deployed in 2004. The unit was sent to Afghanistan in March.