Honestly as a former soldier who served in Iraq I don’t even know the American procedure for notification today and would be interested if anyone had a breakdown of how it works in modern dod.
If you google 'US casualty notification officer" you’ll get way more about that than you probably wanted.
Put simply, there’s an officer from the deceased’s branch who goes to the next-of-kin and notifies them, along with a chaplain, and helps coordinate the next steps with the family.
I have a suspicion that some of that is because we actually ship the dead back pretty quickly these days, and also because the telegram was seen as too impersonal.
Also telegrams aren’t a thing anymore and sending the message via email would have all sorts of problems.
True… but I’m pretty sure they switched to the in-person method well before the demise of the telegram.
In the book We Were Soldiers Once…And Young, about the Battle of Ia Drang in Vietnam, Western Union gave telegrams to Yellow Cab drivers to deliver. Since all the families lived in the same neighborhood near Ft. Benning (where the 1st Battalion was based), everyone was panicked when they realized what all the cabs were doing there. The battalion commander’s wife wound up organizing an impromptu organization of other wives/family members to support the bereaved families, since the Army had totally dropped the ball.
ETA: The author (Harold G. Moore, commander of the 1st Battalion), states this experience is what actually led to the creation of the official notification teams.
Yes. They didn’t have to be young, fit soldiers – they could be older, even retired soldiers, or soldiers who were wounded and released from service.
In WWII, the rationing on gasoline & tires was a bigger problem – driving out in the country to farms was difficult. I remember Grandma telling about how the officers sometimes waited until the family came into town for Sunday church, and caught up with them then.
You would think the military would be exempt from the rationing, after all that’s all part of the war effort.
And kind old King George
Sent mother a note
When he heard that father was goneIt was, I recall
In the form of a scroll
With gold leaf adorned
And I found it one day
In a drawer of old photographs, hidden awayAnd my eyes still grow damp to remember
His Majesty signed
With his own rubber stamp
Legally, they were exempt. As were many of these farm families were too, since they were raising the food people needed.
But there was great peer pressure from neighbors to ‘ration yourself’.
Grandma mentioned that when so many families had their young people serving in the military, seeing anyone being ‘wasteful’ caused strong feelings. And small town people weren’t hesitant to voice those feelings.