I can’t express the emotion that I have when I see a life taken in combat and how the family copes with the grief and sheer horror of loss.

There are no words I can write on Widows Quest that will properly express what I feel today….but maybe I could say

Death will never bring an end to the love that we feel, death will never stop us remembering, death will never be in vain and death will never mean that we forget. Death is just a pause in our lives together….an eternal flame of everlasting love and gratitude will burn forever

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For someone who knows the devastation of death, I just cannot imagine what these familes go through. What they go through when they are alive fighting on the front line and what they go through when they hear that fateful news…..

I don’t think I could cope with the not knowing, the fear, the loss….and I just wanted to write somewhere to say…

I cannot ever imagine your pain, I cannot imagine what it is like losing someone through war and fighting for the democracy of others. I cannot imagine how I can help you, but know this….my thoughts, my prayers are with you all. There is not one day that I don’t think about the pain….it is true that these soldiers will never be forgotten.

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Here is a snippet but suggest you read his thoughts in full -

“What I don’t want this to be is a chance for me, or anyone else, to be maudlin. I’m dead. That sucks, at least for me and my family and friends. But all the tears in the world aren’t going to bring me back, so I would prefer that people remember the good things about me rather than mourning my loss. ”

The last phrase touched my heart like no other

“I don’t know if there is an afterlife; I tend to doubt it, to be perfectly honest. But if there is any way possible, Amanda, then I will live up to Delenn’s words, somehow, some way. I love you.”

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“A US soldier has been withdrawn from Iraq after his two brothers were killed in action, echoing the Oscar-winning film “Saving Private Ryan”, it was reported Friday.

Jason Hubbard, 33, will return to his family’s home in northern California after younger brother Nathan, 21, was one of 14 soldiers killed in a Black Hawk helicopter crash in northern Iraq on Wednesday.

The death came three years after a roadside bombing claimed the life of another sibling, Jared, 22, in Fallujah in 2004, reports said.

Jason was withdrawn under the military’s “sole survivor” policy aimed at preventing parents losing all of their children to war.

The case bears a striking similarity to Steven Spielberg’s 1998 film about a mission to recover a soldier from northern France after all his brothers are killed during the D-Day landings.

“Art imitates life, and unfortunately sometimes life imitates art,” an army official who asked not to be identified told AFP.

Jason Hubbard had been travelling in another helicopter accompanying the Black Hawk chopper which crashed on Wednesday, according to reports…..

A priest and family friend, Tim Rolen, said the Hubbard family was struggling to come to terms with the tragedy.

“The word I would not use is destroyed. This is a family with strong ties, strong connections. It won’t destroy them, but it will get them about as close as you can get to that,” he told the Fresno Bee newspaper….Later that year he had signed up along with elder brother Jason, a former policeman. The brothers’ mother said she believed Jason had joined to protect his younger brother. In an interview shortly before his deployment to Iraq, Nathan said he was unfazed by the risk he could be killed.

“People are going to be hurt, and people are going to be killed,” he said. That is the reality you have to accept, but not dwell on.

“If I worried about dying … I would live too cautious, and I want to live a very great life,” he said.”

 How telling that last phrase, maybe hero Nathan had it right…we never know how long we have in this world and living it to the full is all we can do…god bless the family.

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“At least 700,000 children have had a parent deployed overseas, but there are scant resources for the stressed kids who are exhibiting social, emotional, behavioral and academic problems.

Nearly 50 percent of troops killed in Iraq have left spouses and children behind, but there are precious few programs offering grief counseling for Gold Star families. Support for family members acting as primary caretakers for their severely injured veterans, including those with polytraumas and traumatic brain injury, is virtually non-existent.

Since 2001, 160,000 female troops have been deployed, and 10 percent of them are single mothers. Women combat veterans are at an elevated risk for PTSD, and often suffer military sexual abuse. But the VA has just two gender-specific in-patient treatment programs.”

The article continues saying that “the untreated effects of combat-related trauma last a lifetime, and long-term consequences include: unemployment, depression, divorce, domestic violence, chemical dependency, poor physical health, homelessness, “accidental death,” suicide and even murder. “

I understand the effect of bereavement and don’t know what I would have done without the support of family and friends. We spend billions on defense budgets, surely we should be spending a little of that on supporting society through the effects of the war.

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