Casualty notification

I read this excerpt in the magazine The Week (online access limited to print subscribers). The line that gets me every time is "And they know. They always know."

Death comes knocking

Every door is different. Some are ornately hand-carved hardwood, some are hollow tin. Some are protected by elaborate security systems, some by flapping screens. The doors are all that stand between a family and the message.

For Maj. Steve Beck, it starts with a knock or a ring of the doorbell—a simple act, really, with the power to shatter a soul.

Five years ago, the then 40-year-old Marine officer was catapulted into a duty he never trained for, an assignment that starts with a long walk to a stranger’s porch and an outstretched hand sheathed in a soft white glove.

While every door is different, the scenes inside are almost always the same. “The curtains pull away. They come to the door. And they know. They always know,” Beck says. “You can almost see the blood run out of their body and their heart hit the floor. It’s not the blood as much as their soul. Something sinks. I’ve never seen that except when someone dies. And I’ve seen a lot of death.

“They’re falling—either literally or figuratively—and you have to catch them. In this business, I can’t save his life. All I can do is catch the family while they’re falling.”

On a blue-sky Labor Day weekend in a new, upscale residential neighborhood, a middle-aged man mowed his yard as a silver SUV ambled down the street past manicured lawns and half-finished homes. In a place filled with soccer moms and SUVs, the Suburban with government plates didn’t stick out. The two men inside did.

Minutes before, Maj. Beck and Navy chaplain Jim Chapman had parked briefly outside the neighborhood and closed their eyes in prayer. Chapman asked for “words that will bring the family peace.” At the time, Beck didn’t know what those words would be. He never does.

When Beck’s phone rings with news of a Marine’s death, he always feels the pressure of the clock. Once the call is received, the goal for notification is four hours. Troops in the battle zone often have access to e-mail and satellite telephones now, so when a service member dies, the area is placed under “River City,” or R.C. When an area goes R.C., all communication back home is shut off to keep rumors from reaching the family before the notification officers arrive. Still, Beck knew that bad news runs like water downhill, creating its own path. “As soon as we receive the call,” he says, “we are racing the electron.”

When the knock came on this occasion, Katherine Cathey was napping in a bedroom in the home of her mother and stepfather. Her stepfather saw the Marines first. “We’re here for Katherine,” Beck said quietly. “Oh, no,” Vic Leonard said.

At first Katherine’s mother, Vicki Leonard, thought it was a salesman. Then she saw her husband walking backward and the two men in uniform. “Oh, no,” she said, and then, “She’s pregnant!”

Vic asked his wife to wake Katherine. Vicki shook her head. She couldn’t speak.

Katherine could hear her mother crying—no, wailing—when her stepfather opened the bedroom door.

“What’s going on?” Katherine asked.

“It’s not good. Come with me,” he said.

Katherine’s screams began as soon as she saw the uniforms.

Two Marines are required for each death notification, not just for emotional support, but for each other’s protection. At the beginning of the war in Iraq, one of the Marines from Beck’s unit was slapped by a furious mother. In 2004, a distraught father in Florida set fire to a van that carried the Marines sent to notify him.

The reaction was different on this day. Katherine ran to the back of the living room and collapsed on the floor, holding her pregnant stomach. Finally, she stood, but she still couldn’t speak. As the chaplain and the major remained on their feet, she glared at them. It was a stare the major had seen before. “Maybe that’s what hurts me the most,” Beck says. “That because I’m standing in front of them, they’re feeling as bad as they’re ever going to feel.”

From the book Final Salute by Jim Sheeler. ©2008 by Jim Sheeler.