Faith, Hope, Love, and Amazing Grace

Chapter 8
“We Are Going to Do Right by This Family”
Psalm 22


The most difficult part of my ministry as a chaplain was the heartbreaking task of face-to-face death notifications to the next of kin of soldiers killed in action (KIA). Some tasks in life get easier with repetition. You think, things won’t be as difficult this time. Wrong! This principle does not apply to knocking on a loved one’s door, uniform army dress blues, at anywhere from 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. (the army’s window for notification ) and telling a parent or spouse that their twenty-something-year-old soldier is gone.

Two stories in particular illustrate the difficulty of this task. Chaplains are not sent out by themselves to notify the families. They are on the mission to accompany the casualty notification officer. He or she is a soldier of equal rank or one rank higher than the deceased. The casualty notification officer and the chaplain are both in their dress uniforms; they knock on the door, introduce themselves, and ask to speak to Mrs. or Mr. … Once the next of kin is confirmed, the casualty notification officer (CNO) asks if we may come in and asks the person to please take a seat. The notification is sometimes quoted, but more often, it is read due to the CNO’s grief and nervousness:

The secretary of the army has asked me to express his deep regret that your (daughter, son, husband, Susan, Trey, etc.) was killed in action in (state, country) on (date of death). The secretary extends his deepest sympathy to you and your family in your tragic loss.

The chaplain and the CNO stay with the family member and help contact the military unit to which the soldier’s family belongs and a trusted friend. Very often this simply involves dialing the phone number for the grieving survivor because they are too overcome with emotion to think straight or to dial the phone. The chaplain is present to offer grief support to the family member and moral support to the CNO.

After the initial shock of the news, it is not uncommon for the grieving family member to think about the kids at school or about the deceased soldier’s parents who live in a different city or state. The first impulse is to call them and let them know what has happened. The chaplain will speak up and respectively request that the call not be made to the parents or whoever is listed on the soldier’s army paperwork as the secondary next of kin. The chaplain will gently explain that there is a second KIA notification team in the city where the parents live, who will notify the secondary next of kin once the primary next of kin notification has been completed. The army has two reasons for this procedure: (1) respect for the deceased soldier and his family and (2) safety concerns; if the notification is made in person, no one is by themselves when they hear such awful news.

The word awful describes this terrible experience, and it brings me to my second story to illustrate the stress and pain involved. A chaplain is often paired with a casualty notification officer who has never before carried out a notification, while the chaplain has done dozens. For that reason, I would offer to drive the government car to the destination so the CNO could worry out loud about how the mission would go and could keep his or her mind busy by reading over the expression of condolences statement. I vividly remember, as if it were yesterday, one experience in particular. The CNO I was working with that afternoon was a senior enlisted noncommissioned officer, a sergeant first class. He was truly knowledgeable and skilled, having been in the army for over twenty years. But he had never had to make a KIA notification. I remember that his hand was literally shaking as we got in the car and started out on our journey. He said to me a couple of times, “Chaplain, this just isn’t right. This is awful. They ought to have a special MOS [military occupational specialty] for this job! I’ve been in the army twenty years, and I never had to do anything this terrible!”

“I know,” I replied. “You’re right. It is terrible, and no matter how many times you do it, the job never gets any easier. But I’ll tell you what, we have been given this mission, and we are going to do right by this family. We are going to do this notification the best it can be done out of love for our fallen brother/sister.” I handed the good sergeant a three-by-five card and told him to write down on the card, step by step, what we were going to do. He did this while I drove to the home of the next of kin (the young wife of a Fort Hood soldier who was in Iraq). I told him, “Number one, we will find the house and call back to the Casualty Assistance Center. We need to let them know we located the house. Number two, you will knock on the door, introduce yourself, ask to speak to Mrs. …, ask if we can come in, and ask her to please sit down. Number three, you will make the notification, ‘The secretary of the army has asked me to express his deep regret …’ Number four, after the outburst of grief, you will quietly ask the grieving survivor if there is anyone that the chaplain can call (neighbor? trusted friend? pastor?) to come over to the house. Number five, you will politely excuse yourself and step outside to call the Casualty Assistance Center (CAC) to let them know that the primary next of kin has been notified of the death. That frees up the CAC to notify the CAC where the secondary next of kin is located so the team there can notify the parents.”