Requiem for Fallen Fighters
    By Brigid Schulte
    The Washington Post

    Thursday 09 November 2006

Episcopal rector memorializes casualties by reciting the names of the dead.

    On the first Monday of every month, the Rev. Robert H. Malm stands before his congregation at a special requiem service and reads the name and rank of every U.S. serviceman or woman who was killed in Iraq or Afghanistan the previous month.

    The first thing he notices is that most of the casualties are enlisted men. The officers and the women, those names jump out. But it's the privates, the specialists, the corporals and the sergeants who are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    Every morning, Beth Wiggers, an administrative associate at Grace Episcopal Church in Alexandria, starts her day by checking the names on the Department of Defense's Web site. "DOD Identifies Army Casualty," the headline often reads. They die in places such as Anbar Province, Balad, Muqdadiyah, Baiji, Baghdad, Fallujah and Kandahar.

    "I notice where they're from. I notice their names," she said. "And I notice their ages...."

    The majority are younger than 24.

    Every week, Wiggers records the names and the church publishes them in its bulletin. Every Sunday, the week's death toll is read from the pulpit. Oct. 8: 18 dead. Oct. 15: 31 dead. Oct. 22: 24 dead. "Requiescat in pace." Rest in peace, "the 23 U.S. servicemen and women who died last week in Iraq and Afghanistan and all other victims of warfare and terror," Malm read at the Oct. 29 Mass.

    At Monday's service, the October list was one of the longest since the war in Iraq began in March 2003: 105 U.S. dead, one of the deadliest months since the U.S. Marines staged an all-out offensive against insurgents in Fallujah in 2004. That month, 137 died.

    With the United States deeply divided by the war and its costs, Grace Episcopal Church's actions could be seen as controversial - political even.

    Ted Koppel was excoriated by some a few years ago for reading the names of the dead on his "Nightline" broadcast. Sinclair Broadcasting Co. refused to air the show on its ABC-affiliated stations. That was back when there were 721 names to read. Now, the total is closer to 3,000.

    A Department of Defense journalist lost her job after photographing rows of flag-draped coffins being returned home with the remains of U.S. military men and women. Critics said that such photographs would weaken the resolve of the country and that that would play into the hands of terrorists. Many supporters of the war have maintained that opposing the war is unpatriotic.

    But to Malm, the monthly requiem is not about politics. It's not about being for or against the war.

    "These people need to be remembered," Malm said in an interview in his rectory office. The names are offered as prayers, he explained. And prayer is hard to debate.

    "This war is so confusing, and most of us live in denial. It's easier to go on our merry way, to take care of the economy, our personal needs," he said. "But we all need to have an awareness of this war. And its costs."

    Those who have died are strangers to him. Not one was a member of the parish. And yet, Malm said, the experience of intoning each of their names is profound.

    The idea for the requiem came a few years ago from parishioner Mike Hix, a retired Army colonel who served two combat tours in Vietnam as a young man.

    He and his wife had traveled to New York one weekend and attended services at the Church of the Heavenly Rest in Manhattan, which was founded in 1865 at the close of the Civil War as a memorial to the soldiers who died in that conflict.

    Hix said he sat transfixed as the pastor read the names of the young men and women who had died that week. "As they read those names, it just brought me to tears, and my wife as well," he said. "It was so powerful."

    Hix, perhaps more than most, knows that a casualty list is more than a collection of names. "These are real people, with real names. These names have wives and children they've left behind," Hix said.

    He suggested the idea to Malm and others at the church. Malm remembers some of the thinking at the time was that, with opinions in the congregation so divided about the war, reading the names every Sunday might prove overwhelming for some. So they compromised: The names would be read at the monthly requiem on Monday.

    "I made the point that I didn't consider it a political act," Hix said. "People who support the war certainly believe we should honor the sacrifice of those killed. And those opposed to the war certainly honor and respect the sacrifice as well. I felt this was something we could unite around. We could all agree they deserve our respect."

    Especially, he said, because many Americans have found it easy to distance themselves from this war. True, there are 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. But, with no military draft, as there was during the Vietnam War, and with no tax increase or national war effort to pay for it, as there was in previous wars, some find it easy to feel disconnected.

    That's one reason Malm asked that the numbers of dead be published in the bulletin every week. "It shows the severity of the situation," he said.

    Not many people attend the monthly requiem, Malm said, just the usual core of 15 to 20 parishioners, mostly older, those who would come to daily service, anyway. But more than a thousand people know that the names of the fallen are read. "Believe me, we'd hear about it if we stopped," he said.

    Malm and Hix keep their personal views on the war to themselves.

    But the constant stream of names coming before Malm has had him meditating on the war's costs. What does he think about as he reads the latest list of fatalities? "The profound failure of war," he said. "What has it ever ultimately achieved?"

    He thinks that the easy rhetoric of evil and of black-and-white conflict does not square with the complicated modern world. And he wonders: Where are the pacifist voices of those who take to heart the commandment "Thou shalt not kill"? He wonders what would happen if people became less interested in simply defending war and were more open to mercy, understanding and forgiveness.

    As Wiggers readied the list of 105 names of those killed in October for the Monday requiem, Malm sighed. "It's just so sad."

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