It breaks my heart every time
Once upon a time, a dead American soldier from Massachusetts would have been front page news in my newspaper. I used to know all their names. I had spoken to relatives and friends of most of them. I had been to some of their homes, and to their funerals. Now I don’t even know the exact number.
Last night, we learned a young man with family ties to Worcester, Mass., was dead. Someone had to be assigned to make the call that no one wants to make.
This is what I advise reporters to say when they are intruding on someone’s grief:
“I’m sorry to intrude. Is there someone who would like to speak for the family? We would like to be able to tell people something about your son.”
What he lived for. What he died for. What he did with his life and what he hoped to do with his life. Who loved him. How they want to remember him. What they want the world to know about him.
Sometimes families want to talk about those things. They want everyone to know, and they open the door, or put someone on the phone. Other times, they want to be alone in their grief. That’s when, I have advised reporters, the correct thing to say is, “I am sorry to have intruded. Please accept our condolences and our respect.”
Last night it was 1st Lt. Michael A. Cerrone, 24, A Company, 2/505 PIR, 82nd Airborne. IED, Sammara, Iraq, last Sunday. He died with PFC Harry A. Winkler III, 32. Both of Clarksville, Tenn.
Cerrone was the son of Brig. Gen. James A. Cerrone, a special assistant to the 18th Airborne Corps commander at Fort Bragg. First Lt. Cerrone will be buried in Worcester, where his father grew up and graduated from St. John’s High School and Assumption College.
“We miss him tremendously, and we’re as proud as proud can be of what he did,” his grandfather, Anthony Cerrone, told our reporter. But he was spent from talking to reporters, and didn’t want to say more than that.
Cerrone was a West Point graduate, following his father’s footsteps into the Army. You can imagine his parents’ pride and their worries, military family or not. You can imagine their grief, the end of dreams.
I don’t know anything else about Michael Cerrone. I know his unit, though. I spent a few days with the 2nd of the 505th a long time ago, before all of this started. Cerrone’s death reminded me of night patrols, earnest professional young officers just like him, and a young American I met then, for whom becoming a paratrooper was part of his search for spirituality:
1 September 1999
VITINA, Kosovo - The grenade exploded among the men
lounging in front of the Serb store, about 30 yards from paratrooper Dana Dunham’s face as his patrol walked into “Little Belgrade.”“That’s pretty damn close,” said Dunham, 26, of Duxbury, Mass., as he rode a Humvee back into Vitina’s Serb neighborhood a week later, for another night of trying to keep Kosovo’s Albanians and Serbs from killing each other.
“I was trying to figure out what was going on when I see this kid coming at me, 16 years old, with his face full of blood,” Dunham recalled. “I pulled him down and called in the sit rep (situation report).
“There were three people on the ground, one of whom later died,” he said. “There was a civilian applying CPR, trying to save him. It was like something they were used to.”
Dunham, of the 82nd Airborne Division’s 505th Regiment, is one of several thousand American soldiers in KFOR, NATO’s peacekeeping force in Kosovo. For many, it is easier duty than they expected. For others, who find themselves defending the Serbs they thought they would meet as enemies, it has become a lesson in life, death, and irony.
“We expected to fight our way in … This patrolling the city, peacekeeping, isn’t something we train for,” said Dunham, as his patrol headed for a crossroads at dusk to stop cars and search for weapons.
“I’ve seen a lot of weird things in this country,” said Sgt. Kevin Casey, 28, of Billerica, Mass., as he led a foot patrol through Vitina on a warm August night, using a helmet-mounted night vision device to light up the darkness in shades of green.
“I stopped two little old ladies going back to Serbia and asked if they have pushka, rifles. They said yes,” Casey said. “They pulled out these two AKs the Serb Army had given them, with double magazines taped together. They wouldn’t even have been able to lift those guns up to their eyes to sight them.”
He found ski masks and rifles in one Serb house - the trademark of Serb paramilitaries - and took an anti-tank rocket from an Albanian who called it a souvenir.
“Everyone is armed,” he said, pointing out a nearby Serb housing project.
“We took a heavy machine gun, grenades, a ton of AKs out of that yellow apartment building. Then they said they didn’t feel safe. We had to park a tank across the street.”Around midnight, a couple of bursts of fire from an AK-47 sent Casey and his patrol running around the corner - clicking their rifles off safety and peering over walls into household courtyards, rifle first, as they went. It was soon apparent this was another case of someone expressing himself with gunfire to no particular end, a common event in Kosovo. The distressed squealing of pigs in a Serb compound attracted Casey, who questioned a man there but decided not to search his house.
“I asked him if he heard gunshots. He said TV, television. Jerk,” Casey said. “I don’t want to scare his kids. It might not even be him. I’ll come back tomorrow with an interpreter and search the house.”
An hour later, an explosion and a clatter of rifle fire sounded on the other side of town. Radio chatter indicated that a patrol had stumbled on a man tossing a grenade at a Serb house. The incident was over in seconds as the Albanian attackers fled into the night.
Mortar fire from the hills and grenade attacks target Serbs several times a week as Albanians seek vengeance for the killings, expulsions and years of repression they suffered. Serbs are killed in ones and twos as they are caught in their fields or on dark streets. Defiant Serbs are suspected in other attacks, such as a grenade attack on Vitina’s market day that killed an old woman and injured 38 other people.
The paratroopers raid suspected weapons caches, patrol the hills and villages, and post guards at the most vulnerable Serb households. While Kosovo once had about 200,000 Serbs - about 10 percent of the population - most have fled to Serbia, and there are now believed to be fewer than 20,000.
“Slowly but surely, the Serbs are losing out,” said Lt. Col. Richard Hooker, who commands the 2nd Battalion of the 505th Regiment. “It’s a bit of a dilemma for us. We are here to protect everyone and we want them to stay. But if they want to leave, we try to help them.”
Hooker said he believes the anti-Serb attacks are by rogue elements, not sanctioned by the KLA political leadership. While NATO has been criticized for not doing enough to protect the Serbs, Hooker said his troops have been aggressive in their defense.
In early August, he said, there were more than 50 men being held at Camp Bondsteel, the American base, charged with rape, aggravated assault and murder, awaiting the arrival of U.N. police and a civil court system to stand trial.
Several paratroopers have been wounded - one by a bullet that fragmented on his helmet, another grappling with a knife-wielding man - but none have been killed by hostile fire yet.
“It’s always close to the troops,” Casey said. “We’re right among the people. We’ve been taking fire, but it’s not effective fire. I don’t think they want to kill a KFOR soldier . . . They’re burning houses. We catch them doing it. They fire off a couple of rounds to keep our heads down, so they can take off into the woods.”
PFC Jonathan O’Dea of Providence, R.I., said, “The attitude of people here is horrible. They hate each other with a passion that is so deep, nothing will change that. They both love us. They both are glad we’re here . . . But the hatred between these two races is not normal. This dispute goes back hundreds of years. It goes so far back, I’m not going to judge who’s right or wrong.”
In Ferizaj, virtually empty of Serbs now, GIs patrol in a more relaxed manner, knowing an attack is unlikely and they are free to admire the main street’s constant parade of attractive young women in a country where half the population is under 20. Restaurants carry names like “KFOR Cafe” and “AMERIKA THANK YOU.”
Orders forbid any sexual contact or drinking by soldiers, but flirting occurs despite the glares from disapproving Albanian men. One KFOR source suggested it is inevitable that some Albanian women will have “Airborne babies” before this occupation is over.
“You get a little too comfortable,” said Joshua Hoyt, a paratrooper from Bangor, Maine, patrolling “Route Cowboys,” as the Americans have dubbed Ferizaj’s main boulevard. “Then all of a sudden there is a shooting, and you realize that you have to keep your guard up.”
Some soldiers note the rise of organized crime activity as an ironic sign that the situation is normalizing in Kosovo, and that it is time for a civil police force to move in.
“The lootings and beatings are down,” said Sgt. Sean Sandler, 28, of Andover, Mass. “Now it’s the Albanian mafia - extortion, charging rent on places they don’t own, black marketeering.”
“It was a ghost town when we got here,” said Sgt. Randy Revell of Marlboro, Mass., “Now it’s almost a fully operating city. We’re trying our best to be the police force, to be the order, so they can get normal lives.”
Lt. Ben Ring, 25, of Peabody, Mass., who patrols Kosovar villages and farmland in a 70-ton M1A1 tank, found himself resolving a domestic dispute like a beat cop.
“This guy was beating his sister-in-law. It turns out he terrorizes all the local villagers. He’s a cow thief. We pretty much put the fear of God into him, let him know we’re watching him. We haven’t had any trouble since,” Ring said.
Ring also has experienced Kosovar hospitality. Like GIs liberating France, he and other American soldiers entering Kosovo were met by throngs of people throwing flowers and chanting “NATO!” He has been invited in for tea in the villages where you take off your boots at the door, sit on the floor, and the men throw cigarettes across the room to honored guests as a sign of respect.
Dunham was attending Fitchburg State when he said he became disillusioned with the soft, self-centered life of a student. He left school and became a paratrooper, seeking discipline and adversity. He found plenty of both with the 82nd Airborne in Kosovo.
“It’s kind of hard for people to understand. A lot of young people aren’t involved in searching for spirituality . . . the more I go on in life, I find, the closer I get to my goal,” Dunham said. Now, though he is mulling the idea of divinity school, he added, “When I get out of here I’ll go to UMass Amherst, study theater and grow my hair long.”
Topics: Kosovo/Kosova, military
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:39 am on Thursday, November 16, 2006
5 Responses to “It breaks my heart every time”
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November 16th, 2006 at 12:42 pm
We’d like to send condolence cards to the family if possible. If you have info on where to send or who to send to, would you let me know?
Dayngr
Proudly Supporting Our Troops Through eMail Our Military
November 17th, 2006 at 3:06 pm
Jules, this is why I started my project, They Have Names. I’d love for you to look at it and, if possible, please write it about it and spread the word.
November 17th, 2006 at 3:07 pm
Oh, the URL is http://www.theyhavenames.com
November 19th, 2006 at 1:52 pm
thank you, jules.
November 23rd, 2006 at 2:00 am
What outstanding young troopers! Godspeed!