Two Deaths in a Small Town

By: Dennis Anderson At the moment, the tributaries of this war feel as if they feed into a large river of sorrow. The so-called low U.S. casualty count in Iraq stacks high the moment you know the dead or their surviving kin.

I am spending a few evenings this week interviewing Nancy Walker, mother of Staff Sgt. Allan Kendall Walker, our hometown Marine killed April 6 in Ramadi.

Two days after his death, during my tour as an embedded reporter with our local National Guard unit, a C-130 flew into Baghdad carrying a cargo of contractors, a few G.I.s, this reporter and his Guard escorts. Also, a steel casket lashed between our boots in the floor space of the transport.

When we landed, a number of us felt a bit guilty at being rushed down the cargo door without so much as a salute to pay respects. A mortar or rocket attack was in progress and we had to get out fast, leaving air crew to move the casket. The mortar attacks end quickly here, like a fast rain.

The odds that the remains we rode with as cargo was Staff Sgt. Walker: One in six. For he was among six Marines killed in Ramadi on April 6.

Of course, at that time, I had no idea a Palmdale, CA. son was killed in the big offensive when Marines rushed into Fallujah-Ramadi. The Marine advance was halted within a few days when the Iraqi death toll rose high enough to occasion alarm in Washington and Baghdad.

The result? Very close to home. My 19-year-old son is a lance corporal, a grunt, in one of the units I believe is being prepared for a fresh and nearly inevitable assault on Fallujah.

If I don't mention his name here, or his unit, it is because tactical security is one of the commitments he is honor bound to respect. He has not informed me of his destination, but I figured out where he's headed, as my Guard unit first sergeant put it, by "doing the backwards math." Reading last Sunday's New York Times story about preparation for a new campaign to retake Fallujah, I understood where my son is, and what he is doing.

Simply, he is among the thousands who will be sent to finish the fight begun by Staff Sgt. Allan Kendall Walker and his brother Marines on April 6.

Because of my brief tour embedded with National Guard, I have friends who have killed and nearly been killed in Fallujah. It is a desperate fight, and it will likely erupt again.

The notion that Staff Sgt. Walker's remains (or one of his slain comrades) traveled with me into Baghdad on April 8, coupled with the dawning understanding of my son's mission, simply buckle the knees of this father, who by accident of circumstance had some role in covering these global and intimate events on "both sides of the pond."

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When Staff Sgt. Walker's body returned home in April for the final time, my newspaper covered it like a state funeral. Meaning the event was laden with consequence as well as sorrow.

Just weeks ago, however, my paper missed the funeral of the second Marine killed in action with family ties to the Antelope Valley: Marine PFC Fernando B. Hannon,19, whose family resides in the neighboring desert community of Mojave. We did not mean to miss it. On hearing of their son's death, the family requested privacy and we wanted to respect that. Suddenly, the honors were done.

At the Antelope Valley Press we support our troops by loving them in life and honoring them in death. That is not synonymous with agreement about everything that has been done, or that will be done, in this war in Iraq.

We honor the dead, we hope with the simplicity, and the eloquence, they deserve. More often than not, these are young lives ended, but our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have claimed the lives of older soldiers, and women. Our casualties range the spectrum of innocence and experience.

I would have wanted to attend the funeral of PFC Hannon, who I never knew, but whose life and death requires our respect, and sorrow. Virtually anywhere I go as editor, it is in the role of media, even if attending on a personal basis. It's a community role. If only paying respects, the notebook is still at hand. That is how communicators try
to describe history.

It is presumptuous to believe a stranger might be able to provide any measure of comfort to the Hannon family, but to PFC Hannon I would want to bow my head. Hannon was killed Aug. 15 in deadly Al Anbar province. He was a rifleman.

Here is how the Valley Press learned of the death of PFC Hannon: We received a couple of brief press releases, one from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. It staggers me that I sometimes receive several of these news releases weekly. Marines and G.I.s in Anbar Province (read that, "The Sunni Triangle") are the ones taking the most fatal hits.

We used a U.S.M.C. official release as basis for a short piece in the paper, and not finding the family in immediate want of sharing their grief, lost the thread of the story, but not for lack of wanting to tell it. So this is my tribute.

Hannon would have been like most Marines, a physically tough, probably friendly and funny young guy, in love with life, and willing to risk death for his Corps and country. His father, Spurgeon Hannon is a Vietnam veteran. Service families tend to extend by generations.

What is the cost? A story in the Philadelphia News that moved on Aug. 6 recounted that more than 129 U.S. servicemen had died in Anbar province since President Bush declared the end of major combat operations in Iraq on May 1, 2003. More have died since, PFC Hannon included.

A faint few in America serve in the military now. They number a little over a million among 294 million inhabitants. With first responders and everyday heroes, the troops make this the home of the brave and land of the free. How do we cover their lives, and tragically, their deaths? It's simple. We can't do enough. We hope all Hannon's loved ones realize this as we salute their son's courage.