John Rutherford
By John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington
A memorial service was held last Friday at Arlington National Cemetery for a soldier who died in Iraq after his discharge from the Army was blocked and his enlistment was extended.
Sgt. Timothy M. Smith, 25, of South Lake Tahoe, Calif., was one of more than 12,000 soldiers currently subjected to stop-loss orders, which force them to remain in the Army involuntarily.
"He should have been out," his father told the Tahoe Daily Tribune. "He had done his duty."
Smith had joined the Army in 2004 and had served a nine-month tour in Afghanistan in 2006.
"He was pretty gung-ho going to Afghanistan," his brother told the Daily Tribune.
But Smith's attitude changed after he returned home. He married Shayna Richards on July 4, 2007, and began the formal process of adopting her infant son Riley.
"He had a family to come back to, a wife and a son to come home to," his brother said.
Smith decided to leave the Army, but he was prevented from doing so by stop-loss. He was shipped instead to Iraq in November 2007 to clear roadside bombs and was killed by one of them on April 7, 2008.
CONTINUED >>
By John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington
Some families endure tremendous sacrifices for this country that most Americans are unaware of.
Sharon Rusch was three days shy of her sixth birthday when her father was shot down over Laos in 1972 and disappeared.
"He wasn't suppose to fly that day," Sharon said recently. "Actually, his friend was, but his friend's wife had called and said, 'I had a bad dream. You can't fly today.' So my dad took the mission and of course got shot down."
Air Force Capt. Stephen Rusch, 28, left behind his wife Judy and daughters Sharon and "We had nothing," Sharon said. "My mom had no money. She would work all day at minimum wage jobs and then put us to sleep and make doll clothes for us for Christmas. It all worked out in the end, but I don't know how she did it."
Sharon joined the Air Force herself in 1992 and rose to the rank of colonel in the Dental Corps. She married a fellow Air Force officer, Kevin Bannister, and had two daughters of her own, Kira and Haley.
But her father's disappearance continued to prey on her, especially when she began receiving phone calls from a man who insisted her father was still alive and living overseas.
"He never asked for money, but that's where I think he was going," Sharon said. "I was very quick to tell him I didn't buy any of it and I thought it was awful of him to call families. He contacted me a couple of times and then sort of disappeared."
She said families of the missing are often targets of such scams.
"It's more common than you would think," she said. "It makes me a little sick to my stomach to know people are out there doing that to families."
About 10 years ago, her father's crash site was located, and a bone fragment was later recovered. A DNA sample was needed from his mother to identify his remains.
CONTINUED >>
By John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington
Army Chief Warrant Officer Michael Slebodnik, the father of six children and a veteran of six combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, was buried Wednesday at Arlington National Cemetery.
Slebodnik, 39, died Sept. 11 of wounds suffered when his helicopter was hit by small arms fire in Afghanistan.
Slebodnik enlisted in 1987 after graduating from high school in Gibsonia, Pa., and spent the next 21 years flying helicopters in the Army. He participated in Operation Desert Storm in 1990 and served four tours in Iraq before deploying to Afghanistan in January.
He was scheduled to return home this month but was fatally wounded near Forward Operating Base Nagil on the seventh anniversary of 9/11.
"Mickey loved his country," his sister Jody said at an earlier memorial service. "He loved being a soldier. That's all he ever wanted to be."
He also loved his wife, Tanja, his daughter, Ginger, his three sons, Michael, Jacob and Spencer, and his two stepsons, Benjamin and Dylan. CONTINUED >>
By John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington
Iraq and Afghanistan don't look very far apart on a map, but they appear worlds apart when it comes to the success of the U.S. war effort in those two countries.
Each month, I interview soldiers receiving Purple Hearts at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and invariably they tell me the war is going well in Iraq and badly in Afghanistan. Last Friday was no exception.
"There was a lot of progress made in my area of East Baghdad east of Sadr City," Army Sgt. Brian Scott, 28, of Boston, Mass., told me. "It was going very well."
Scott, who was wounded Aug. 28 by a roadside bomb, worked with the Iraqi police forces.
"Progress has been made with the Iraqi police over time," he said. "I noticed it personally working with them and going on patrols with them and talking to the people that were feeling more comfortable coming and talking to the Iraqi police about regular crimes that happened in the streets and neighborhoods of their area."
Afghanistan is a different story, according to two soldiers who were wounded there.
CONTINUED >>
By John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington
Marine 1st Lt. Nicholas Madrazo was one of three Americans whose Sept. 9 deaths in a roadside bombing in Afghanistan left three grieving mothers back home in this country.
Madrazo, 25, of Bothell, Wash., was buried Wednesday afternoon with full honors at Arlington National Cemetery. His mother and other family members dabbed at their eyes as a chaplain conducted a graveside service and a Marine band played "Eternal Father, Strong to Save."
"I'm sure he's in heaven and I can be there someday with him," his mother told KING-TV earlier.
Madrazo graduated from Seattle Pacific University and thought about becoming a firefighter after he left the service.
A similar Arlington service was held a week earlier for Marine Capt. Jesse Melton III, 29, of Randallstown, Md., who also died in the Sept. 9 bomb blast. His mother, dressed all in white, saluted a Marine officer who presented her with a folded American flag from her son's casket. CONTINUED >>
By John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington
Arlington National Cemetery buried its 500th casualty of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan last Friday, one of five soldiers and a sailor laid to rest at the cemetery on a late summer morning.
At 10 a.m., a bagpiper played "Amazing Grace" for over 300 mourners at services for Navy SEAL Joshua Harris, 36, who drowned Aug. 30 in Afghanistan while crossing a river during combat operations.
"He was a brave warrior, SEAL role model, mature and reliable teammate, and an absolute great American," his commanding officer said in a statement.
Harris, the son of a doctor, grew up on a dairy farm outside of Lexington, N.C. He majored in studio art at Davidson College and studied for a master's degree in architecture at UNC Charlotte. He lived for a time in New York City and had his drawings and sculptures displayed at Lincoln Center. Harris joined the SEALs just before turning 29, the cutoff age for eligibility.
About an hour and a half after Harris' graveside service, an Army band struck up "God of our Fathers" and four Black Hawk helicopters flew over group burial services for five soldiers killed May 30, 2007, when their Ch-47 Chinook helicopter was shot down over the Upper Sangin Valley of Afghanistan.
CONTINUED >>
By John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington
Louis Boxrucker last saw his brother Lawrence when the 23-year-old twins joined the Navy back in 1940.
A year later, Lawrence died in the attack on Pearl Harbor. He was on board the USS Oklahoma when it was sunk by Japanese torpedoes on Dec. 7, 1941. The Navy immediately sent Louis to Honolulu from his post in Bermuda.
"They wanted as many people as possible to help over there," Louis's daughter, Karen Boxrucker, said in an interview. "It took him two weeks to make his way to Pearl Harbor, and it was just still devastation. Everything was still burning, oil slicks all over, and everything was like, he said, blown to hell."
Louis also had to deal with problems of mistaken identity.
"While he was over there, people thought he was actually Uncle Lawrence, because they looked so much alike, and he had kind of a hard time dealing with that," Karen said. "They had the nickname 'Boxy' when they were in the service, and people would come up to him and say, 'You know, Boxy, we thought you had passed, you had died in the Oklahoma,' and he had to explain to them that it was his twin brother, so it was hard, hard for him back then."
Only 36 of the 429 sailors and Marines who went down with the Oklahoma were identified because they didn't wear dog tags in peacetime. The remaining 393 were buried as Unknowns in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.
"It's just been lately that they started bringing them back up and trying to identify them," Karen said. CONTINUED >>
By John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington
Some of the families of the troops who were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and buried in Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery are hopping mad at cemetery officials for taking and throwing away flowers, photos, medals and other mementos left at the graves of their loved ones.
Regina Barnhurst of Severna Park, Md., lost her 20-year-old son, Marine Lance Cpl. Eric Herzberg, two years ago in Iraq.
"These guys are 19 and 20 years old," she said in an interview. "They're our babies, you know, and we have to do the birthdays, we have to do the anniversaries, we have to do the special things.
"That's our way of honoring them and - sorry, I get really emotional about this - but it's our way of trying to come to terms with the fact that we don't have our sons anymore, and I think it's very wrong of them to just take things and throw them away."
Paula Davis of Gaithersburg, Md., whose only child, Army Pvt. 1st Class Justin Davis, 19, was killed in Afghanistan in 2006, said leaving mementos is part of the grieving process.
"I think it's disrespectful to just toss things like that," she said, "especially when you know they're very meaningful to the individual that left them there."
CONTINUED >>
By John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington
The deaths of 10 French soldiers last week in Afghanistan is a reminder that Americans aren't the only ones fighting and dying in that increasingly violent war.
Our allies from 22 other nations have suffered 24 of the 42 casualties so far this month and 364 of the 944 casualties since the war began in 2001.
"Everyone's got a chance to get attacked," MSNBC military analyst Jack Jacobs said, "and everyone's got a chance to attack the bad guys."
Generally speaking, Col. Jacobs said, the allied troops aren't as good militarily as the Americans, but they're nevertheless pulling their weight.
"The other countries do want to help," he said in a recent interview. "I mean, after all, they're at risk as well from the Taliban and al Qaeda."
Col. Jacobs expects the U.S. will soon begin pulling troops out of Iraq and into Afghanistan, but he doesn't anticipate a similar buildup of allied forces.
"I'd be terribly surprised if there'll be a substantial increase from any of the allied countries," he said. "Our allies' armies are very small and are not rich with counterinsurgency capability. The preponderance of forces will come from the United States."
I asked a soldier receiving a Purple Heart for wounds suffered in Iraq if he believes it's a good time to begin transferring U.S. troops from Iraq to Afghanistan.
CONTINUED >>
By John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington
Growing up in New Jersey, Joe Valencio always held out hope that his father, missing in action in the Korean War, was still alive somewhere in Asia.
"Especially when you're a kid, there's all kinds of conjecture," Joe, now 60, said in an interview. "The Russians came forward and said there were POWs from the Korean War in Russia. He could also have been in China or maybe living somewhere in Korea, for all I knew. Those were the thoughts of a 12 year old."
By the time Joe was in his 20s, he had pretty much given up hope.
"I felt he was not coming back, and I hoped he wasn't in some camp somewhere or something like that," Joe said.
Joe's uncertainty over his father's fate ended in March when the Army notified him that the remains of Army Master Sgt. Cirildo Valencio had been recovered in North Korea and identified by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command's Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii.
"Scientists used mitochondrial DNA and dental comparisons in the identification of the
remains," the Pentagon said in a news release. CONTINUED >>
