Iowans will say goodbye today and on Saturday to the 28th and 29th of its sons who have died during military operations in Afghanistan or Iraq.
Funeral services will be held today at the municipal auditorium in Sioux City for Spc. David Lee Rice, 22, the 29th to die, killed April 26 when a rocket-propelled grenade struck his vehicle about 50 miles north of Baghdad. He was assigned to 1st Battaltion, 5th Field Artillery Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, based at Fort Riley, Kansas, and was serving his second tour in Iraq.
Services will be held on Saturday at the high school in Nevada (Story County) for Sgt. Robert J. "Jason" Gore, 23, the 28th to die, who was killed April 21 when the civilian helicopter in which he was a passenger was shot down en route from Baghdad to Tikrit during a diplomatic security mission. Gore, a member of the 186th Military Police Co., Iowa Army National Guard, had been transferred to inactive status while performing a six-month tour as a security professional for Blackwater USA, a civilian security company. He had returned home during May of 2004 after a year's tour of duty in Iraq with his Iowa unit.
Iowa is a small town composed of smaller towns, so such deaths and such farewells tend to be taken very seriously here in this year of our Lord 2005, leading the front page of our largest and most influential newspaper, The Des Moines Register, receiving similar treatment elsewhere and being featured prominently on newscasts statewide.
That's not always been the case. As a veteran both of Vietnam and of several searches through newspaper clip files, bound volumes and microfilm for information about some of the 1,000 or so Iowans who died there, I guarantee it. As that war moved along, then wound down, a front-page paragraph announcing death was extraordinary and information about funerals generally was relegated to the obituary page when the military finally got around to returning the remains. I'm not sure why, although I have my suspicions.
That came to mind a while ago during a news meeting with the newest editor now sitting behind the glass wall in the newsroom of the modest Iowa daily I work for. "But soldiers dying in Iraq isn't front-page news any more," he said (although certainly not in exactly those words) when told that we planned to feature the latest Iowa fatality prominently on front page. We proceeded as planned, but I'm not sure Joe was convinced.
There is something pure, clear and sharply cutting about the death of a soldier, no matter the political outlook of the observer or his or her opinion of the war. It's easiest to express for a self-identifying patriot: That soldier died for his or her country. No greater love .... For the rest of us it's more subtle, perhaps especially so for those around whom the ghosts of Vietnam always are gathered. But no less clear: We did not work hard enough to ensure that it didn't happen again. They're dying for our sins.
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