If you don't cry when you read this, you're dumb or numb

A Madison soldier's family grieves while seething at military brass
'One wound after another'
By Steven Elbow
August 24, 2005
Madison State Journal

Every time the wound begins to heal at Ray and Diane Maida's house, something comes along to rub salt into it.

First came news that their son, Mark Maida, a 22-year-old Army sergeant, was killed in Iraq by a roadside bomb on May 26. Then, a week after his death, the Army gave only hours' notice that the body would be arriving at Gen. Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee, forcing the grieving family into a frantic scramble to retrieve it for a funeral two days later.

Letters and packages to Mark from home arrived for a time almost daily, marked "Return to sender." Then a slow trickle of possessions arrived from Iraq and his unit's base at Fort Irwin, Calif. To top it off, despite repeated efforts, Army officials failed to provide details of Mark's death. More than two months later, the Maidas finally got the details of his death, not from the Army, but from the Washington Post.

"It's just been one wound after another," Diane said. "And just about the time you think you're on the upswing, then you get shut down again with another incident."

For the Maidas, pain from the loss of their son has been compounded by countless snafus. Ray said an Army official even admitted, unofficially, that the Army lacked a proper protocol for dealing with the families of dead soldiers.

It's part and parcel of what Ray sees as a pervading ineptitude in conducting the war and the military's inability to protect its troops.

"They can take a $1 million missile and put it up some Iraqi's ass and they can't tell me what time my son's coming in?" Ray fumed. "This is why my son's dead, this total incompetence."

On Aug. 12, the Maidas finally found the information the Army wouldn't provide. Ray's daughter, Juliann, learned of a Washington Post article that ran two days earlier in which Terry Rodgers, a soldier and good friend of Mark's, recounts his last moments and his last words.

"I went online and began to read it and I had to stop," said Ray, pausing, his eyes welling up. "I just started crying, you know? I guess it changed my picture or the dreams I had. That one I wake up to in the morning, that picture changed."

Reluctant warrior: Mark Maida graduated from Memorial High School in 2001, a few months before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11.

"Mark wasn't about the military, but he was in the military," Ray said. "After 9/11, because he wasn't going to go to college, he thought he'd do his service."

He was also motivated by a sense of duty that echoed back for generations. Both of his grandfathers served in WWII and his father, a retired Madison detective, was a combat veteran in Vietnam. Mark's older brother, Chris, had been in the Marines since 1999.

Shortly before his three-year stint was up on Nov. 1, 2004, Mark applied for an early release from Fort Irwin to attend school - a common request - but Mark's unit mishandled his paperwork until it was too late, Ray said. His unit was deployed to Iraq and, although Mark only had a month to serve out his time, a military "stop-loss" order kept him in uniform until his unit was to return to its home base at Fort Irwin.

"Of course Mark was upset by that," Ray said. "But Mark didn't raise hell. He didn't protest and followed orders."

In Iraq, he became disillusioned.

Mark and his fellow soldiers patrolled trouble spots, often looking for insurgents planting roadside bombs. Although Mark was trained as a gunner on a Bradley fighting vehicle, the soldiers typically traveled in Humvees, which insurgents have been remarkably successful in blowing up.

"He's in Iraq and he's serving and he's getting frustrated, frustrated at the incompetence of leadership," Ray said. "He didn't feel he was accomplishing what America was saying was being accomplished."

But he had a sense of obligation to his fellow soldiers that outweighed his aversion to the military.

At a memorial service in Iraq captured on video, Spc. Shawn Klock, Mark's roommate for two years, said "he didn't like the military, but he did his job to the best of his ability because he loved his friends and family."

Maida could have challenged his deployment, Klock said. Others had. He could have gotten out and followed his dreams of going to college and one day buying a Harley and cruising across the country. In Madison he had a girlfriend, Elizabeth Jacobs, and they planned to get married.

"I asked him one time why he did not fight harder to get his (discharge), and he told me 'I could not live with myself if I knew that one of you guys got hurt and I was not there to help you,'" Klock said. "He chose to take this deployment because of the love he had for his friends."

Stateside, Mark's family and girlfriend contacted U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold after his deployment, asking for a review of the stop-loss order that was keeping Mark in Iraq. Mark didn't want to be involved, but something in Feingold's response to a letter from his girlfriend changed his mind.

Feingold's letter said the senator had concerns about stop-loss. But he indicated that the Army was applying the policy across the board, retaining deployed soldiers who have met their contractual obligations as well as those who were scheduled to retire.

Mark, who had just seen his sergeant major get discharged for retirement, fired off a letter to Feingold dated May 18, eight days before his death.

"I am curious how this can be if 2/11 ACR (Mark's armored cavalry regiment) is still under stop-loss orders," he wrote. "My original (discharge) date was 31 October, 2004 and I'm still here. I feel very unappreciated. What are they trying to say? That the three years I gave my country wasn't enough? I don't care if he did do 20-plus years, he's in the same army I'm in."

He added, "There are many soldiers in this unit in the same situation and would all be grateful if you could help us get out of this bad situation."

Fearing that a letter addressed to a U.S. senator might arouse suspicion, Mark sent the letter to his parents to make sure Feingold got it.

Feingold's office did not return inquiries about whether there was an investigation of Maida's complaint.

Mark's legacy: When speaking of the stop-loss policy, which he considers a back-door draft, and his family's attempts to get Mark home, Ray's voice rises.

"Mark would want to pursue people's knowledge about stop-loss, that there are kids being kept in," he said, "that there's this, what I call involuntary servitude, that we fought the Civil War to stop."

He also said Mark would want people to know about a military that is needlessly placing its soldiers in jeopardy, particularly by putting them in Humvees, the bombing of which are now claiming the bulk of U.S. casualties.

Ray said he is encouraged by Cindy Sheehan, who also lost a son to the war and whose anti-war vigil at President Bush's vacation home in Crawford, Texas is putting pressure on the administration to answer some questions about how the war is being conducted.

"I respect Mrs. Sheehan for wanting to get the message out," Ray said. "It took Mrs. Sheehan driving to Crawford, Texas and sitting at the gate of Bush's vacation home to get the message out, 'Are we telling the truth about the protection of the troops?'"

Ray and Diane said Mark's death has motivated them to speak out about the government's failure to provide adequate equipment for soldiers in Iraq.

"When it comes to equipment, supplies, he would want to let the world know that they weren't adequately equipped," Ray said.

While Mark's death could raise awareness about the incompetence that led to his death, Ray said his legacy is unlikely to include a successful venture in Iraq.

"History will tell us what he did for Iraq and its people," he said. "We don't know right now. Some of us are speculating that we have destroyed Iraq. Some are speculating that we've given them this newfound desire for freedom. I hope his legacy is that spark of freedom. I don't see it, but I hope that's it."

Supporting the troops? If there's one thing that galls the Maidas, it's the endless parade of bumper sticker ribbons.

"Do you know what my government's not doing to support the troops?" Ray said. "I want people to know the lack of respect and the folly of 'We Support Our Troops.'"

Mark's brother, Chris, 24, was a Marine, serving only 10 miles from Mark's unit, although they never saw each other in Iraq. After several of his friends died from being blown up in their Humvees, Chris made it home safely on April 1.

"It's a glamorized pickup truck," he said. "We're riding around in Humvees that obviously aren't strong enough to withstand an IED (improvised explosive device) blast. Myself and all the Marines were pissed we were put in this position."

When he found out that Mark was patrolling in a Humvee, not a Bradley, Chris' first instinct was to try to save his brother.

"Chris, the week before Mark died, he was begging him, begging him not to get into Humvees," Ray said.

Chris later recounted the conversation.

"'Tell them you refuse, you know, it's not worth your life,'" Chris remembered telling Mark over the phone.

Chris said the reason troops in Iraq are patrolling in Humvees instead of fighting vehicles is the cost, which makes many soldiers feel like they are expendable.

"If they feel the troops are worth it, why not spend the money?" he said. "It's human life. You can't put a price on it, so I don't see why they're putting them in this position."

Now Chris has a college degree and works in Milwaukee as a counselor for troubled girls. But he is hounded by his experiences in Iraq - the dead friends, the loss of his little brother and the guilt of having survived.

"I felt like I shouldn't have left if he was over there," he said. "Not only that, you see a lot of innocent civilians die, and that really screws your head up. I've lost a lot in this war, and I've seen a lot of bad things. I don't know if I've seen enough good over there to feel it's justified."

Of Chris, Ray said, "Physically, he's intact. But he lost his buddies and he lost his brother. So I sacrificed two sons to this war. At least the people in charge should let me know what the sacrifice was about, what my son was doing when he was killed."

House of pain: The grief at the Maida's spacious duplex on Madison's far southeast side is palpable. Ray and Diane have three remaining children, Juliann, 32, Aaron, 29, and Chris, which helps. They are extremely tight-knit.

But Mark's death still weighs heavily in the air.

Several boxes were recently delivered to the Maidas - Mark's belongings from Fort Irwin, which the Army had initially told them didn't exist. They remain in the garage, unopened.

"I know what's in them," Ray said. "I helped him pack them."

A picture of Mark in desert camouflage, which was displayed during his unit's memorial for him in Iraq, sits on a counter in the kitchen. Diane's eyes linger on it when she passes.

"Just when you think things are starting to get normal, all of a sudden it's another dip in the roller-coaster ride," she said. "That's made the healing process more difficult for us - those repeated wounds. Like his belongings coming back from Iraq one week, then the next week another set of belongings coming back, then there's this article in the Washington Post that we didn't know was coming out."

The last wound, they maintain, could have been averted if someone from the Army - someone who knew Mark and could tell them what happened - had called.

"Mrs. Sheehan wants to talk to the president a second time," Ray said. "I just want to talk to a lowly officer in a company level command or a battalion level command."

While seeing the story of his son's death in print was a shock, Ray and Diane are beginning to see it as a blessing.

"We finally said, well, it does reinforce the fact that he wasn't still alive in that helicopter suffering on the way to Baghdad with Terry Rodgers," Ray said. "And so, you know, it helps."