One of the toughest jobs for Marines on home front

BBC:

Nashville, Tennessee, is the cradle of country music, home of doleful ballads about love, faith and sacrifice.

Here, as elsewhere in the US, people worry about Iraq.

But unless they have sons or daughters serving there, most of them remain emotionally detached - and they never have to think about what the arrival of a marine in a white van means.

Marine First Staff Sergeant Chad Bilyeu is a delivery man of sorts. But with a knock on the door, what he delivers is the worst kind of news.

As a casualty information officer for the 3rd Battalion of the US Marine Corps, based in Nashville, he has the task of telling families that their son or daughter, brother or sister, has died.

He has now made 11 personal visits of this kind - one of them, a little over a year ago, to Tammy and Steven Delle.

The Delles live just outside Nashville, in a middle-class neighbourhood where patriotism can be measured by the height of the flagpoles.

Tammy's 20-year-old son David Bass, a marine corporal, had been in Iraq for six weeks on his first tour when Staff Sgt Bilyeu's white van pulled up outside the house at 1100 one day.

"When we show up in our vehicle and knock on this door, they know that it's not good news," says Staff Sgt Bilyeu.

Tammy was summoned downstairs. "When I came down there were three marines standing right there," she says, describing the moment a year later with tears in her eyes.

She knew immediately that it meant her son was dead, she says.

"I felt that somehow if I could go back up the stairs I could make it not be true."

Staff Sgt Bilyeu, a reserve officer, says: "Coming in and telling that news is definitely hard. I think it's the least that I can do for him and his family - and hopefully give that family some closure."

Since that first visit, he has also provided much-needed emotional and practical support to the family, becoming almost like a surrogate son in the process.

"I cannot imagine why anybody would want to do that job but I'm very grateful that he did and that someone with such compassion is doing that job," says Tammy.

"How these marines are so tough and they have to be able to do things that the rest of us can't imagine doing and then when they're here telling me my son died, they are so gentle."

...

I have said it often, but it is worth repeating. Marines are special people even when having to do the jobs at home that no one would want they do it with class and dignity.

There is an old Marine Corps joke that deals with a crusty old sergeant who is told to inform one of his Marines that his father has died. Wanting to avoid an emotional scene he calls a company formation and orders all the Marines whose father is still living to take one step forward, then tells the Marines, "As you were Jones." If you were a Marine you would understand the joke. Obviously, when on the detail reporting casualties more sensitive leadership is called for.