Comfort in action

Marines honor their fallen comrades, their families and each other

Jim Sheeler, Rocky Mountain News

Published May 2, 2005 at midnight

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Inside the airport baggage claim area, Jo and Bob Burns searched the crowd, looking for someone else's son.

"That one over there with the military haircut," she said, nodding toward a young man. "Is that one of them?"

"I'm not sure," her husband said.

For the past several weeks they had tried to prepare for this day, a day they were supposed to arrive here to welcome home Marine Lance Cpl. Kyle Burns. Instead, they came to meet the young men who last saw their son alive.

"This has really upset me tremendously, thinking about these guys coming," Jo Burns said. "At the same time, I think we need this."

During the drive from Laramie to Denver, Bob said his mind drifted back to a night marked by a scream that still haunts him - the scream from his wife when she saw Marines at their door.

"The scream, I don't know how to describe it. Bone-chilling, blood-curdling," he said. "I grabbed a flashlight, ran upstairs and then I saw the Marines."

As he drove on, he felt his stomach sink all over again and wondered if he could relive it all.

Inside the airport, as they waited to pick up Marines they'd never met, Jo Burns wondered what they would think of hugging their dead friend's mother.

"I think they probably feel guilty that they get to come home and he didn't," she said. "I don't want them to feel guilty. But on the other hand, I also wish it was my kid who got to come home. I'm glad they get to come home, but . . . "

She stopped the sentence with a thin white handkerchief printed with the Marines logo - one that's already absorbed nearly six months of tears.

Over the next 24 hours, several families would share the Burns' emotional journey as Marines from around the country flew to Denver to honor their buddies who didn't make it and tried to comfort the families left behind.

In the process, the servicemen were about to learn a lesson of their own: The families of the fallen weren't the only ones who needed help to heal.

In the baggage claim area, Jo Burns finally spotted them - five tall young men, two of them wearing cowboy hats, all of them carrying telltale olive drab bags stitched with the Marines emblem. She and her husband hurried toward them.

"Hi, guys," Jo Burns finally managed, tentatively grasping the hand of the first one in line, then drawing him close, raising on her tiptoes for a hug. She then moved on quietly down the line, looking up into their eyes as hers welled once again.

A few minutes later, as they headed to the hotel, she managed a smile.

"They hugged me back," she said, still sniffling. "I wasn't sure how apprehensive they would be, but that felt good.

"They hugged me back."

Remembering the brave

As the Burnses and other families arrived at a nearby airport hotel, Marines flew in to join them from around the country. Some of them had returned from Iraq only days earlier.

The gathering was organized by the people the families never wanted to see: Marines stationed at Buckley Air Force Base whose duties include informing next of kin about the deaths of Marines killed in action.

Once the casualty assistance officers arrive at the door, absorbing the screams and tears, their job is far from over. Saturday night, it continued.

The event - dubbed "Remembering the Brave" - sprang from one Marine's desire to formally award posthumous medals to families of Marines from Colorado, Wyoming and South Dakota. The word spread all the way to Iraq.

The day before the event, inside the hotel restaurant, the Burns family sat down with the young men in their son's company, and faced a few awkward minutes.

"Thank you for the package you sent," said 21-year-old Dustin Barker - Kyle Burns' best friend in the platoon - who arrived in the United States three days earlier.

"Thank you for your letter," said Kyle Burns' father.

"I'm sorry I didn't have a chance to write more," Barker said.

Jo Burns never wanted her son to be a Marine. When he invited a recruiter over to meet her, she admits she was openly hostile.

"I have to be honest. I didn't believe all that brotherhood b-------. I thought it was just a bunch of little boys saying things that boys say," she told the young Marines.

"I never believed it until after he died."

Since then, she said, she's seen the caring of the Buckley Marines and the notes and calls from her son's buddies, checking up on her.

As the group sat at the table, the Marines began filling in the blanks of what Kyle Burns was like at Camp Pendleton and in Iraq.

They told her how he liked to bodyboard off the coast of California and about the games they would play while drinking. They knew him well enough to know he only wore Carhart jeans - never Wranglers. They joked about how he would cram his Humvee with cans of chewing tobacco in every cranny.

They also knew exactly how he died in Fallujah on Veteran's Day 2004.

"You can ask us anything. We need to get it out. We've been holding it in for so long," Barker said. "That's why we're here."

No time to grieve in combat

At Fort Logan National Cemetery, the grass over Kyle Burns' grave is starting to grow in. It still needs time to take full root.

"It hasn't sunk in yet. It's hit, but it hasn't," Barker said, as he looked at his buddy's grave.

"When you're over there, there's no time to grieve. You worry that if you do, you'll get someone killed."

For Lance Cpl. Mike Ball, the shock and reality were similar.

"I started to let the tears come," he said of seeing his friend die. "But we had patrol in 10 minutes. You have to shut it off. We just got in the vehicles and started driving."

Since then, he's kept the grief somewhere else - a place in his mind he had yet to unlock.

"That night when I got back, I actually tried to get back to that place, I tried to mourn. But it was gone," he said. "And I knew I'd have to wait."

At the cemetery, one of Kyle's high school friends began to ask the questions everyone had dodged - questions that arose from rumors and miscommunication, and only raised more questions.

"So, it was an AK-47 that hit him?" Kyle's friend asked.

"No, it was an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade)," Barker told him. "That's why I'm here. Sometimes things get mixed up."

"I heard that he lived long enough for them to give him last rites," Kyle's friend said.

"No," Barker said quietly. "It was very quick."

Over and over, throughout the weekend, the Marines would repeat the story of the assault - not only Barker, but the company commander, the corpsman who treated Burns and the platoon leader who was shoulder to shoulder with Burns when he was injured.

They told the story without embellishment or melodrama - there was no need for it, they said. Because of Kyle Burns' actions, they said, other Marines are still alive, and what more do you need?

"What were his last words?" someone asked.

" 'I'm hit,' " Barker said.

For the Marines, repeating the story over and over is part of their therapy.

"You'll tell the story a couple times and you're all right, and then the third time, man, it just hits you again," Barker said.

Despite the pain, they say, it's a story they say they'll continue to tell.

"I'm going to be telling my kids and grandkids about these guys," Ball said. "My grandkids are going to be so sick of hearing about Burns, Blake, Staff Sgt. Holder. They'll be saying, 'But grandpa, we already heard that one.' And I'll say, 'You need to hear it again.' "

Filling in the blanks

As the time for the "Remembering the Brave" event neared and more Marines arrived, the same scene played out in different parts of the hotel: families learning the stories of their sons from those who were there.

At one table, Marines sat with the family of Joseph Welke from South Dakota, looking through photos his mother got back from his camera in Iraq, and they explained the last images Welke saw.

At another table, Marines sat with Tracy Loveberry-Ross, mother of Lance Cpl. Justin Ellsworth - who grew up around Vail - filling in the blanks from his time in Iraq.

Meeting with the Marines, however, was only part of the reason for the gathering. The families also were there for each other.

"When they came to my door and told me my son was dead, they didn't give me a manual on how to handle it," said Terry Cooper, mother of Lance Cpl. Thomas Slocum, the first Coloradan killed in the war in Iraq.

Just as Cooper and her husband, Stan, tried to figure out how to handle their grief back then, they now share their experiences with any family who wants to listen.

"I went a long time without anyone I could share things with, and it's nice to have common ground," Terry Cooper said. "It's a terrible thing to want to have that kinship. You wouldn't wish it on anyone. But now that it's happened, it's good to have the fellowship."

Cooper first met some of the families after funerals she has attended, trying to work through her own emotions. She keeps in contact with many of them regularly, just to check up - and to share what she never could before with those who understand.

"It's a very, very special group of people," she said, as she looked into the hotel lobby. "I think that we're in just as good company as our boys are."

Heaviest medals in the world

Before the event began, Maj. Steve Beck stood in the empty ballroom, looking at a line of medals on the table, struggling with all they reflected.

"When you think about what these guys did, it's not easy to look at these medals," he said. "What's the trade-off? What's the exchange? How do you say (holding up a medal), 'This is for your son?' "

As the man who stood on the doorsteps of the families of those fallen Marines, he understands how delicate he needs to be. He also knows how heavy the medals can weigh.

"It's not a trade, but in the minds of the mothers, I wonder if they think it is a trade, and that they're thinking, 'I don't want this medal. I want my son.'

"The only way I can dispel that is through something like this. By showing them the honor. By honoring their son."

Beck began planning the event early this year, after he heard about the number of medals due the Marines whose mothers he watched over. After attending so many funerals, after crying with so many families he now considers his own, he said he had to let them know what they meant.

Still, he said, some people wonder if it's too much.

"Even some of our Marines say, 'Why are we doing this to the families? Why do you have to keep reminding them?' "

Beck shook his head.

"This isn't about reminding them - they don't need reminding. These families think about this every day of their lives.

"This isn't about reminding them," he said, and then looked up. "This is about reminding you."

Stories of courage

Once the lights dimmed in the ballroom, more than 500 people went silent.

"You are about to hear the descriptions of individual acts of courage," Beck said. "Listen closely. Listen closely."

For nearly an hour, they heard detailed accounts of rocket-propelled grenades and improvised explosive devices - of ambushes and assaults, each with the same ending.

Slowly, methodically, the Marines brought out the medals and citations, kneeled before a mother or father they had first met on the doorstep. Halfway through the ceremony, 1st Lt. Paul Webber - the man who was with Kyle Burns when the 20-year-old died - moved forward.

A few hours before, Webber had sat with the Burns family, telling them everything he knew about what happened. Without prompting, Jo Burns told him she knew he did everything he could - that she hoped he had no guilt.

"I think everyone feels some sense of guilt," he told her. "But it's something we're working through. I don't think it will ever go away completely. I had a real hard time with this - a REAL hard time."

That night, in the silent ballroom, Webber held high the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal with a combat "V" for valor, then went down on one knee.

After presenting Jo Burns with the medal, he brought out a pair of dog tags they all thought were lost.

"Oh! Oh!" she managed, through splitting cries. "Oh! Thank you!"

As the room heaved, the citations continued: Staff Sgt. Theodore "Sam" Holder II, Lance Cpl. Justin Ellsworth. Lance Cpl. Gregory Rund. Cpl. Randall Rosacker. Lance Cpl. Thomas Slocum. Sgt. Douglas Bascom. Lance Cpl. Joseph Welke. Lance Cpl. Andrew Riedel.

For each family, the Marines also presented a vase of yellow roses - one rose for each year of the dead Marine's life.

'Now we can mourn too'

When it was all over, the two tallest, toughest-looking Marines at the Burns' table stood and hugged Jo Burns, then each other.

Suddenly, Lance Cpl. Ball's face turned red, then exploded into tears. As he pressed his head into Barker's shoulder, the sobbing spread. Other Marines from the company grabbed hold of each other. They held tight for nearly a minute, holding nothing back.

Eventually, someone started to laugh, and they all laughed for a few seconds, then began to cry again, the tears darkening their deep blue uniforms. After regaining his breath several minutes later, Ball thumped Barker on the back.

"That stuff has been bottled up for so long," Ball said.

"It feels so good to get it out," he said, patting his buddy on the back. "Now we can mourn too."

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