No more individual ceremonies for the fallen at Ft. Lewis

June 1, 2007

I’m afraid this is about the saddest news I’ve seen today.

Fort Lewis, which this month has suffered its worst losses of the war, will no longer conduct individual memorial ceremonies for soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Instead, the post will hold one ceremony for all soldiers killed each month, the Fort Lewis acting commanding general, Brig. Gen. William Troy, wrote in a memo to commanders and staff last week.

“As much as we would like to think otherwise, I am afraid that with the number of soldiers we now have in harm’s way, our losses will preclude us from continuing to do individual memorial ceremonies,” Troy wrote in the memo, according to a copy obtained by United for Peace Pierce County and posted on the group’s Web site. A post spokesman confirmed the policy change Tuesday. It will start in June.

There are 10,000 Fort Lewis troops in Iraq, more than at any other time since the March 2003 invasion. The post has reported 16 soldiers killed there so far in May, by far the most in any month of the war. The previous worst month was December 2004, when nine soldiers were killed, including six in the Mosul chow hall bombing. In all overseas deployments since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, 124 Fort Lewis soldiers have died.

In an apparent attempt to spin the decision, Gen. Troy wrote that forgoing individual ceremonies for monthly ceremonies will “give the families of the fallen the opportunity to bond with one another, as they see others who share their grief.”

Sorry, General, but some tragedies don’t have silver linings.

“I’m afraid this is about the saddest news I’ve seen today.” – CB

you’re absolutely right, CB. absolutely right.

  • This is beyond sad. Obviously, so many are being killed that the army base just can’t keep up. These soldiers should be honored individually; in no other way can their loss be accounted.

    When will someone in the Army stand up and say “no more”?

    General Troy, I certainly hope no one needs to bond at your eventual funeral. I’m sure your family wouldn’t want to share the “honor” of your death with countless others.

  • My God. What a slap to the face of those honorable, brave men and women who had the unfortunate situation of being enlisted during the reign of the most callous, thoughtless, disingenuous, and dangerous leaders this country has ever seen. To not pay them the courtesy of individual burial in favor of a ‘mass mass’ is unbelievable.

    I suppose if an entire company of Soldiers from the same base or fort were lost in some kind of monumental suicide bombing, those in charge of funeral services would bitch and moan that they weren’t spread out enough to avoid the blast.

  • I suppose that the next step to deny the dead their final honor will be group funerals. Then, mass graves. Eventually, we’ll have a lottery to see which grieving family gets the “group” burial flag, with families each getting their “month”—or maybe just a week.

    To deny a soldier his individuality, even in death, is the first step in the forgetting of that individual.

    The term “sad” is an understatement of quantum proportions….

  • This makes a little more sense when you read the whole story, and when you realize these aren’t burial details. But it’s still sad, and more a comment on the hopeless war than on the staff of Fort Lewis.

  • It’s not sad; it’s outrageous. Next stop: wholesale burials in common graves?

  • Oh, ya know, General Troy is right, if he goes to one soldier’s memorial service he’d have to go to them all, and dammit that might eventually become one or more a day. The General would never get none of his generaling stuff done. If he delegated one, he’d have to delegate them all, can’t be seen to be playing favorites in the dead soldiers lotto. And think people, about how hard it must be for the families of those already fallen, I mean if folks showed them the courtesy and compassion of coming to their hero’s memorial, why they’d be honor bound and oblidged by the bonds of human decency or at least good manners in the payback department, ya know, and then they’d all be spending all their time also going to these endless memorial services. And please, don’t forget the families of the not yet fallen…. by golly, they’d feel compelled to attend every last one of those memorial services just on the off chance that their own beloved might eventually fall, and they’d want the same kinda turnout, ya know? I mean sheesh pretty soon, the entire base and it’s environs would be in one never-ending orgy of memorial services and there would be a complete breakdown in the base morale. I can’t beleive anyone finds this once a month ordeal in anyway outrageous or immensly sad, by golly they are doing this for the good of the soldier’s and their families! Think of the kids! Can you imagine how they must feel attending their father’s service and then being reminded on an almost daily basis of their loss and bereavement because they have to attend another memorial service >?Why, their grief would be uneding, and if they only have to reminded once a month, so much the better, the other 29 days, they can be happy-go-lucky kids without a care in the world. Can’t you see, General Troy is doing this for the good of the kids! He’s so like Abu that way.
    Sheesh, you dirty liberal hippys will never be satisfied until everyone is as appalled and sickened by this war as you are. And by golly, if the families of those in harms way don’t mind, than where do you liberal loonies get off?!!…
    ….. end snark!

  • General Troy better be on his way out. I know a number of Generals, and none that would so belittle a soldier’s life like that.

    Disgusting is the only word which describes that decision.

  • Your all morons, this happens in every war. read the whole story and see what the hell is going on. Those who are against this should be taken out shot and have no funeral but left to rot. wake the hell up. This is war, and this is what happens in war time. And this war is likely going to outlast all of us.

  • You know… I saw a chain-letter protesting this. I didn’t believe it to be true, and went on my search to discover the truth. Imagine my shock and anger when I find this article! There are going to be several congressmen getting letters from several outraged people, myself included, over this debauchery! How many deaths did we have in World War II or Vietnam? I can’t seem to find any record of mass-funerals during THOSE times. Are we truly as bad off??

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