FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. — Soldiers dressed in crisp, green military uniforms have notified the families of more than 2,000 men and women of a death at war in Iraq. Now, as entire divisions begin redeploying, Army posts are training teams of volunteers to help widows and other grieving family members in ways historically left to neighbors and friends.
The 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell and a handful of other Army units are giving military wives classroom instruction on how to help a family of a soldier killed at war.
With pencils and pads to take messages, these "care teams" arrive immediately after a death notification and aim to keep life moving in a household brought to a halt by that knock on the door.
"Green suiters can't come in and walk the dog, cut the grass, get care for the kids, wash dishes," said Karla Sketch, family readiness coordinator at Fort Campbell. "Care teams, their main function is to be there for technical support."
Care teams at Fort Campbell, where more than 70 soldiers have died in the Iraq war, were created at the request of wives who have seen each week bring news of soldiers killed in Iraq since the war began and wanted to develop a standard for a community response.
Family readiness groups at Fort Campbell have trained more than 400 volunteers to be care team members, each spending several days studying the psychology of grief to prepare them.
"There is no way we can script what they're going to experience," said Maj. Matt Ferguson, who has helped train the teams for the division's 4th Brigade. "But hopefully we can give them some tools to use when they assist a military family in their darkest hour."
Volunteers, who often won't know the family they're helping, can run errands, answer phones, make travel arrangements for relatives, even be a shoulder to cry on.
They can stay as long it takes relatives to come, Ferguson said.
Sherry Orlando, whose husband was a lieutenant colonel at Fort Campbell before he was killed in Iraq, helped the 101st design its program. She recorded a training film detailing the whirlwind of emotions she experienced after an Army notification team delivered the news.
Care teams were not in place when her husband was killed two years ago in a clash with gunmen guarding the headquarters of a Shiite cleric in southern Iraq. But an outpouring of friends gave her the time to grieve the Army never could, she said.
"When you are notified of a loss like that, it's pretty overwhelming," she said. "The thing that it did for me was free me up to lock myself in a room and start making calls."
Creation of the teams marks a change in how the wartime Army considers its families, said Beth Chiarelli, whose husband commands the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, Texas.
That post was among the first to prepare care teams for upcoming deployments, and Chiarelli asked the Army's historian to document the teams as a way families are uniting. Families on the homefront often provide the strongest support for the military and should be a steady consideration, she said.
"Just 40 years ago when we were in Vietnam, those considerations weren't there," Chiarelli said. "Look how far we've come."
More than 2,030 members of the U.S. military have died in Iraq. With each Army death, the service's actions have followed a similar script.
Once a member of the military is confirmed dead, notification teams made up of at least one officer of equal rank or higher and usually a chaplain are assembled from the base closest to the next of kin. Their goal is to inform family members before they learn of it outside official channels.
At posts that have trained care teams for deployments, notification officers now will ask spouses if they would like a care team to help them. If they do, a three-member team waiting on-call will come.
Fort Campbell and the 101st Airborne Division have trained care teams to be used for the first time when the division completes its deployment to Iraq in late November. More than half of the division has already returned to the war zone.
Army officials say care teams are among the first efforts to standardize support for surviving spouses by using what has long been the practice of military wives during war.
During World War II and Vietnam, neighborhood networks would spring to action when word came that a neighbor had lost a husband. After the Gulf War, military units formed family readiness groups to prepare families and support spouses during a unit's deployment.
The groups, which exist in active and reserve units, provide services to help spouses cope emotionally with extended deployments and manage emergencies at home such as plumbing problems when their spouse is away.
"Families have said, 'This is how we can do it better,' " said Shari Lawrence, deputy public affairs officer for Army Human Resources Command, which is in charge of death notifications. "They've said, 'We're going to take care of our own, too.' "