“NAME NOT RELEASED YET”

Four words I will forever hate.

At about 1am Thursday morning I received news that a helicopter crashed in Iraq taking with 31 marines from Camp Pendleton (home of the 1st Marine Division), and that my friend was most likely on the helicopter. I spent the next 10 hours scouring the internet and contacting everyone I could think of, trying desperately to confirm, or in this case deny!

Late Thursday afternoon I came across a news report that said most of the troops in the helicopter were from a Marine Corps base in Hawaii and not from Camp Pendleton as initially assumed so a bit but not much of a relief. There were 6 or so marines that weren’t from this Hawaii base so my heart was still in my stomach.

Here’s a web site that is the most complete, thorough, accurate site I could find during my 10 hour frantic cyber search. http://icasualties.org/oif/default.aspx  It’s not government affiliated so none of the spin (read: bullshit) of the DoD, USMC, etc… sites and it just gives the facts, very sad gut-wrenching facts, but indeed the facts.

As of Friday afternoon, still no news, no confirmation, no denial, and “NAME NOT RELEASED YET” still listed for 6 marines from the helicopter. I don’t know how these families deal with this, I’d fall apart.  I’m just a friend and I’m falling apart.

Saturday morning. still no news, no calls, no confirmation, no denial, only "NAME NOT RELEASED YET". AARRGGHH!

Saturday afternoon. I hadn’t heard from anyone but decided to check the above web site just in case.  As the page loaded, I wasn’t seeing any “NAME NOT RELEASED YET” and I got goose bumps. I quickly scanned, and re-scanned, and re-re-scanned the list of 31 soldiers from the crash and my friend was not among them! I read it about 20 times just to make sure. THANK GOD! Now get him out of there!

Comments

[Lisa]

Great news! I'm so relieved to hear he's okay, and I don't even know him. Now you can enjoy the rest of the weekend.

[Abby]

Criminy. Tis just sucks. Send them all home. SEND THEM BACK HERE! I read a blog written by a guy who was killed. It just broke my heart. There's no reason for this. It's not patriotic. It's stupid.

[Grissom]

I went through the same thing on 9-11 with the American Airlines flights. Only when the names were released, my friend of many years, Madeline Amy Todd Sweeney, was on the list. Mother of two young children killed just by being at work on the wrong day.