COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Service: Casualties
Small towns face deep war scars
KIMBERLY HEFLING, The Associated Press
February 20, 2007
MCKEESPORT, Pa. - Edward ``Willie'' Carman wanted a ticket out of town, and the Army provided it.
Raised in the projects by a single mother in this blighted, old
industrial steel town outside Pittsburgh, the 18-year-old saw the U.S.
military as an opportunity.
``I'm not doing it to you, I'm doing it for me,'' he told his mother,
Joanna Hawthorne, after coming home from high school one day and
surprising her with the news.
When Carman died in Iraq three years ago at age 27, he had money saved
for college, a fiancee and two kids - including a baby son he'd never
met. Neighbors in Hawthorne's mobile home park collected $400 and left
it at her door.
For a year after his death, Hawthorne took a chair to the cemetery
nearly every day, sat next to his grave and talked quietly. Her vigil
continues even now; the visits have slowed to once a week, but the pain
sticks.
Poor towns see losses
Across the nation, small towns are quietly bearing the war's burden.
Nearly half of the more than 3,100 U.S. military fatalities in Iraq
have come from towns like McKeesport, where fewer than 25,000 people
live, according to an analysis by The Associated Press. One in five
hailed from hometowns of less than 5,000.
The Census Bureau said 56 percent of the population in 2005 lived in
towns under 25,000 and in unincorporated areas, but it could not
provide the number of people in living only in communities of less than
25,000. The 2000 census showed 16 percent of the population lived in
incorporated rural areas.
Many of the hometowns of the war dead aren't just small, they're poor.
The AP analysis found that nearly three quarters of those killed in
Iraq came from towns where the per capita income was below the national
average. More than half came from towns where the percentage of people
living in poverty topped the national average.
Some are old factory towns like McKeesport, once home to U.S. Steel's
National Tube Works, which employed 8,000 people in its heyday. Now,
residents' average income is just 60 percent of the national average,
and one in eight lives below the federal poverty line.
On a per capita basis, states with mostly rural populations have
suffered the highest casualties in Iraq. Vermont, South Dakota, Alaska,
North Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Delaware, Montana, Louisiana and
Oregon top the list, the AP found. Oregon had 7.3 deaths for each
500,000 in population. Vermont had 14.8 per 500,000.
Small towns, big price
There's a ``basic unfairness'' about the number of troops dying in Iraq
who are from rural areas, said William O'Hare, senior visiting fellow
at the University of New Hampshire's Carsey Institute, which examines
rural issues.
Diminished opportunities are one factor in higher military enlistment
rates in rural areas. From 1997 to 2003, 1.5 million rural workers lost
their jobs due to changes in industries like manufacturing that have
traditionally employed rural workers, according to the Carsey Institute.
Rural communities are ``being asked to pay a bigger price for this
military adventure, if I can use that word, than their urban
counterparts,''
O'Hare said.
As a result, in more than a thousand small towns across the country -
from Glendive, Mont., to Barnwell, S.C., to Caledonia, Miss., and from
Hardwick, Vt., to Clinton, Ohio - friends and families have been left
struggling to make sense of a loved one's death in Iraq. It's a
struggle that hits with a special intensity in tight-knit, small towns.
``In a small community, even if you don't know somebody's name you at
least know their face, you've seen them before, talked to them maybe,''
said Chuck Bevington, whose 22-year-old brother Allan, from Beaver
Falls, Pa., died in Iraq, after volunteering for a second tour. ``A
small community feels it a lot tighter because they've had more contact
with each other.''
Even strangers come up and hug his mother, he said.
Grieving for a fallen son
Hawthorne isn't waiting on history's verdict. She's bitter about a
military she said enticed her son with promises of money, then sent him
to a war based on a lie.
``When they came and told me he was gone, oh my God, it just crushed
me,'' Hawthorne said. ``There was actual pain in my heart. It felt like
someone was in there just ripping it apart.''
When her son's first enlistment was nearing an end, before the Sept.
11, 2001, terrorists attacks, Hawthorne said he decided to re-enlist,
partly because the signing bonus of more than $10,000 would help pay
his bills. At the time, he was facing $600 in monthly child support
payments from his failed first marriage.
When he deployed to Iraq, his sister said, he had money saved and
planned to go to college when he got out of the military in 2005.
Instead, he died in Iraq in 2004 when his tank overturned.
Hawthorne said the military gave her $4,000 for his funeral, but it
wasn't enough to cover the $14,000 expense. The funeral home forgave
the rest.
``You don't see anyone who has money putting their children into the
military,'' she said. ``I'm all for our soldiers. Without them our
country wouldn't be where we are today, but this war just doesn't seem
right. Like the Vietnam one. It's not right.''
This archive consists of a topically organized selection of
articles culled by members of the Counter-Recruitment List Serve from printed
publications and web sites. The archive is not complete. We have chosen
material relevant to the work of