On the Internet, and in the 24-hour news cycle, stories come quickly about young men and women with hopes and dreams and people who loved them.

In past wars, a soldier’s death usually was reported in a two- or three-sentence news item played on an inside page in the local newspaper, often weeks after the fact.

His comrades might have held a hasty memorial ceremony in the field, but not back at Fort Lewis where his division deployed.

Today, as the nation pauses to honor its war dead, U.S. military service members do not pass away so anonymously.

Army posts across the country put on public memorial ceremonies, usually covered in the local media.

Grieving mothers, young widows, high school coaches and pastors are interviewed. Friends and family post online tributes.

Gale Poindexter knows all about it.

When her son, Sgt. Joel Lewis, was killed in Iraq this month, Poindexter found herself in the center of a media whirlwind. More than 700 people attended Lewis’ memorial ceremony at Fort Lewis, which was followed by a funeral the next day in Tacoma.

“In spite of the fact it was crazy, I was very happy,” she said. “I felt it honored him. It got the word out about him.”

GREATER AUDIENCE, CONNECTION

More than 3,800 American service members have been killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere since the beginning of U.S. military operations after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

That includes more than 87 from Washington, and it rises to 205 when you include men and women based at military installations in the state.

The largest number, 123, came from Fort Lewis.

Ceremonies there closely follow Army customs and traditions in place for generations.

“My dad was an Army chaplain, and I’ve been around the Army since 1963,” said Col. Jack Van Dyken, the post’s chief chaplain. “Essentially, honoring the dead has not changed significantly in those 40 to 50 years.”

What has changed, he and others said, is that the audience is so much larger now. News and information travel more rapidly, and soldiers, like many young people across America, share their lives with others via blogs and social networking sites.

The relationship between the home station posts and surrounding communities is different, too. In the all-volunteer Army, a much higher percentage of soldiers are married with families. The Army now lets soldiers stay at one post for many years and build local ties – to buy homes, raise families, send their kids to local schools – in ways that past generations did not.

The troops who went to Vietnam with the 4th Infantry Division from Fort Lewis in 1966 did not deploy from there with the intent of returning to the post after a year, observed Alan Archambault, director of the Fort Lewis Military Museum.

Successive troops who passed through Fort Lewis on their way to Vietnam included draftees who went through training there, then moved on.

The connection wasn’t the same as today, when each of Fort Lewis’ major brigades maintains a “community connector” relationship with a city near the post.

“They didn’t associate with the 4th ID in quite the same manner as they do now, as the units are stationed here, then deploy, then return here,” Archambault said.

One exception was the deployment of the 2nd Infantry Division at the outbreak of the Korean War. The division had moved to Fort Lewis in 1946, and some of its soldiers had settled in by the time the North Koreans invaded the south in the summer of 1950.

The 2nd Division’s troops were immediately packed up and shipped to the Far East, where they were the first U.S.-based Army forces to reach Korea.

Local papers were full of stories about dramatic separations: young mothers scrambling to find a way to their home states, new brides from overseas suddenly alone in a strange new place, and other family emergencies.

News reporters also tracked the division’s arrival in Korea and its initial forays in combat.

But the papers did not report on the hundreds of Fort Lewis casualties.

Deaths of soldiers from Washington were covered, as they were in World War II and would be in Vietnam, in short news items on inside pages.

LOCAL DEATH GETS LOTS OF ATTENTION

Sgt. Joel Lewis’ recent death in Iraq also might have passed with little notice had it occurred in a past war.

Born in Canada, he enlisted in New Mexico but lived in Tacoma, and his mother, Gale Poindexter, had recently moved to Tulsa, Okla.

Lewis died in a May 6 bombing of a Stryker in Baqouba that killed six local soldiers. His mother notified The News Tribune by e-mail because he lived and was stationed in the South Sound, and after the initial story, “I would put the phone down and five minutes later it would ring again.”

Reporters from Oklahoma and New Mexico wanted to talk to her. Reporters who cover Fort Lewis called, and she was in touch with writers from Ontario, Canada.

At the Fort Lewis memorial, Poindexter had the chance to meet many soldiers who served with her son. Mike Gregoire, the governor’s husband, presented the family an American flag at the funeral, and a detachment of Patriot Guard motorcycle riders escorted Lewis’ casket to the cemetery.

“This kid went out with style, he really did,” Poindexter said.

Local communities follow the fortunes of Fort Lewis units and join in the post’s observances when a soldier dies.

Puyallup’s former mayor Kathy Turner, for instance, attended all but one of the memorial ceremonies held for the 35 soldiers from the former 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, who died in Iraq in 2004-05. The brigade was her city’s “community connector” at Fort Lewis.

“It was an honor,” Turner said. “It really was the least I could do, as a representative of our city. We really do consider them to be part of our community.”

Retired Army Lt. Gen. William Harrison, the former mayor of Lakewood, has taken that role on his city’s behalf, attending each of the memorials for soldiers from its community connector, the 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division. The brigade has lost six soldiers in less than a month of combat.

Harrison, who was the Fort Lewis commanding general in 1987-89, said memorial ceremonies and news coverage have provided the public with a critical side of the Iraq war story.

“One of my concerns about this administration is that they have not asked the American people to sacrifice in this war,” Harrison said. “These show to people that there is a real cost here, that there are real sacrifices being made.”

The Tacoma Fire Department sends its two pipers to play “Amazing Grace” at most of the Fort Lewis memorials. Local police have turned out for the ceremonies of the nine military police officers who’ve been killed.

CHANGING ARMY PRACTICE

In wars past, Army posts generally didn’t hold a memorial ceremony back home for the soldiers who died overseas.

Van Dyken’s father was a fighter pilot in World War II who went to seminary and returned as a chaplain, serving more than 25 years, including a tour in Vietnam.

“I don’t believe we had them to the same degree we have them now,” Van Dyken said. “The irony of course is that we lost over 40,000 soldiers killed in Vietnam, and here we’ve lost a fraction of that number.”

About 18,000 members of the other service branches also died in Vietnam.

Those greater numbers of casualties would certainly put current practices to the test. Even if the military and media had the ability to rapidly send information back home, how might they have reported the deaths of the more than 19,200 killed in five weeks at the Battle of the Bulge in World War II? Or the 2,500 dead in a little over two weeks at the Chosin Reservoir in Korea?

These days, “the losses are substantially smaller,” Van Dyken said. “But you lose one, that’s too many. For the person who has lost a loved one, one is too many.”

Michael Gilbert: 253-597-8921

mike.gilbert@thenewstribune.com

blogs.thenewstribune.com/military

WASHINGTON STATE’S WAR CASUALTIES

NEARLY 6000

World War II

MORE THAN 500

Korea

1,116

Vietnam

205

Iraq, Afghanistan and other operations since Sept. 11, 2001

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