Returning war dead: New view of wars

by Mark Silva

When the Pentagon announced that it would permit media coverage of the nation's homecoming war dead, reversing an 18-year-old policy against public picture-taking of flag-draped coffins, it said it would leave decisions to the discretion of families.

And tonight, for the third time in five days, a slain American serviceman will arrive at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware with his family's permission for the media to cover his coffin's arrival.

The body of Marine Lance Cpl. Blaise A. Oleski of Floyd, N.Y., is scheduled to arrive at the base that holds the mortuary for American servicemen and women who die overseas. The 22-year-old was killed in Afghanistan, the military says.

This marks the third time since Sunday night, when the arriving coffin of Air Force Staff Sgt. Phillip Myers, 30, of Hopewell, Va.,was photographed at Dover, that media coverage of the nation's returning war dead is being permitted under a policy reversing a ban imposed by former President George H.W. Bush during the Gulf War.

If this is hard on the families, for the Air Force crew members who escort the remains of . military personnel during their final journey home, the mission is particularly emotional as well.

"You think about the family, you think about what they are going through and that they lost a loved one," said Senior Airman Stephen Adams, one of two loadmasters who accompanied the body of Army Spec. Israel Candelaria Mejias this week to Dover in a C-17 transport aircraft. The soldier's body arrived Tuesday.

Mejias, of San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico, was killed by an improvised explosive device Sunday while serving in Iraq.

So far, just one of the three returning to media coverage has come from Iraq - though more than 4,200 members of the U.S. military have died in Iraq and just more than 600 have died in Afghanistan.

Adams, 23, and Tech Sgt. Erin Manley, 37, spoke Wednesday about their experience for the first time in a telephone interview from their home base at Charleston Air Force Base, the Associated Press reports. They had stayed with the fallen solider transported in the hull of the huge transport plane for the duration of the 9-hour flight from a base in Germany to Dover.

"It taxes on your emotions," said Adams, who calls Quantico, Va., home. "We have a lot of time to reflect about the sacrifice of the individual."

Which is largely what media coverage of the returning war dead is supposed to be about, the personal sacrifice as well as the nation's sacrifice, as three families now have allowed under a new way of looking at the nation's wars.