Grim Duty: Bearing the Bad News

EL TORO —  With thousands of Marines in the Persian Gulf and tensions on the rise, someone here has to think the unthinkable. That someone is Marine Maj. John L. Sayre.

In the event war breaks out, it will be his unenviable responsibility to deliver news of casualties to the families of local Marines.

Sayre--director of the Family Service Center at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station and the base’s casualty assistance calls officer--would, in a worst-case scenario, organize teams of Navy chaplains and Marine officers to make solemn visits to the wives, husbands and parents of Marines missing or killed in action.

“They usually know why we’re there,” Sayre said in an interview last week. “They know when they see an officer in uniform and a chaplain by his side. . . . Sometimes it seems I need the chaplain as much as the survivors.”

Being the bearer of bad news, Sayre says, is the toughest job he has had in 19 years as a Marine.

“This goes along with the Marine Corps policy that we take care of our own--not only our own, but we take care of the families of our own,” Sayre said.

Last week, the reality of the gulf crisis struck close to home when eight Marines from nearby Camp Pendleton were killed after two Huey helicopters apparently collided and crashed in the Arabian Sea.

Although he hopes for a peaceful solution in the gulf, Sayer is bracing for the worst because “it would be a little late to start planning after something happened. What we are basically doing is trying to be prepared in case there are mass casualties.”

Shortly after troops from the 3rd Marine Corps Air Wing shipped out in August, Sayre called together officers and chaplains from El Toro, Tustin, Camp Pendleton and Yuma, Ariz., for a class on how to deliver death notifications and conduct follow-up visits with family members to discuss funeral arrangements and survivors’ benefits.

When Sayre put out a request for help from each Marine unit, he was surprised when 78 officers showed up--he had only expected 55--for a one-day training course in September. He asked how many of them had volunteered for the duty. “No one raised their hand,” he recalled. “It is not a job that people would normally volunteer to do.”

Sayre attributes the larger turnout to a concern on the part of Marine commanders that a sufficient number of casualty assistance calls officers--CACOs for short--are available to help families if war breaks out.

“Grief is one of the strongest emotions people can have,” said Sayre, who for two years has been notifying family members of Marine deaths. “Usually when parents or a wife see a military officer in uniform with a chaplain walking up to their door--and their husband, son or daughter are deployed--they know why we are there.”

Chaplains are present to give emotional support to family members after the CACO delivers the news.

“It’s hard internally for me to have to tell someone that the person they love is dead,” said El Toro Chaplain Gerald Cook, who has been making casualty calls to Marine and Navy families for three decades.

His boss, Chaplain Arden Walz, said their main job is to help the Marine officer with the emotional fallout produced from the news of death. “We have some background in dealing with crisis situations.” He recalled a time in Norfolk, Va., when he was along on a notification call and the young wife of a Marine locked herself in the bedroom when she heard the words that he was dead.

The way a Marine dies also may play into the way loved ones react.

“If somebody is killed in action upholding and defending the Constitution and doing their duty, it makes it a lot easier,” Walz explained.

“Because I think we are talking basically about meaning and purpose in life. We see what our purpose is in the military. If a spouse sees that the way in which he was killed--that there is meaning and purpose to what he was doing and it coincided with his military duty--it makes it much easier. But I think that is a basic philosophical point of life here--where death occurs . . . it makes all the difference in the world as far as the dependents accepting what has happened.”

Sayre said those who make home visits can never predict how family members will react. He said often they are just very sad, but sometimes they are very angry.

Marine classroom material advises officers to be brief, to be a good listeners and to accept silence: “An embrace or holding their hand may convey far more than your words are able,” one passage counsels.

Officers are provided a brief statement for the survivors telling them that their husband, son, daughter or family member is either missing in action or dead. It concludes by saying in behalf of the secretary of the Navy “I extend to you and your family my deepest sympathy in your great loss. . . .”

Marine literature urges casualty assistance officers to be compassionate and not to argue with a family member in denial. They are instructed to listen to the family members’ questions or expressions of grief and assure them of their willingness to assist.

“One of the basic rules is never leave them alone,” Sayre said.

Instructions warn the CACOs to try to deliver the bad news in private and to expect shock and withdrawal, denial and anger, hysterical grief and physical reaction.

Officers are advised to tell family members as much as possible about the circumstances of their loved one’s death. Sayre noted that he always telephones Marine Corps headquarters just before leaving on a casualty call so he can have the very latest information available.

The job doesn’t end with the notification visit. A few days later, the CACO must deliver a $3,000 death gratuity check to the family, then visits to make arrangements for the funeral and shipment of the body, and follow up with longer sessions to discuss survivors’ benefits.

Even with the training class and counseling advice, Sayre said each experience is difficult and frequently haunting.

One occasion that sticks in Sayre’s mind occurred early one morning, when he stepped up to the porch of the home of a young Marine who had been killed in a military helicopter accident. The boy’s mother came to the door, took one look at him and the chaplain and screamed, “ ‘I knew it. I knew it. He’s dead.’ . . . She was very emotional. You do work very, very carefully with people’s emotions.”

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