'Voices of the Fallen': Reporting the Story

Back home, the families' willingness to interrupt their grief to help us was amazing. Some folks ran to the Kinko's, others reduced letters they could have faxed to digital PDFs. Some typed up the handwritten letters, afraid we wouldn't decipher their loved one's scrawl. Jerry and Connie Paulsen of Deer Island, Ore., had promised to drive to town to fax me a letter that Jerry's brother Sgt. Ronald Lee Paulsen wrote them from Iraq shortly before he was killed. Then Connie e-mailed me, saying "we have a foot of snow in the driveway and don't know if we can get down the mountain...." So she and Jerry took digital photos of Ron's letter and e-mailed them, along with a photo of the 53-year-old Guardsman in his vehicle in Iraq. 

For some, the task of revisiting the letters and e-mails was too painful. One young widow explained apologetically that "I was really eager to look over all the e-mails ... but with (his) death only being 3 months ago, it was really hard for me ... it was just too soon." She wasn't alone. One mom noted in passing that she wanted to save a voice mail message from her son but couldn't bring herself to listen to it once her son had been killed.

But if there were tears, the families gave a predominant sense of strength. Most were buoyed by the conviction that their son or husband died for a worthy cause. Others drew comfort and strength from their faith in God—or the faith that their dead loved one had had. And clearly the military families drew strength from one another. Look at the Web-based memorials for fallen soldiers, and one sees a network of shared grief. A mother who lost her son writes to console the wife of another.

The following NEWSWEEK staffers contributed reporting to this project:
Dan Ephron
Eve Conant
Jonathan Mummolo
Daren Briscoe
Andy Murr
Catharine Skipp
Gretel Kovach
Sarah Childress
Jac Chebatoris
Jamie Reno
Samantha Hening
Ty Brickhouse

© 2007