Western Courier

Issue date: 3/21/05 Section: News

Media Credit: THE ORLANDO SENTINEL/KRT U.S. Marine Corps Capt. Chuck Valence, center, leads a unit in Orlando, Fla. and, among other duties, notifies families when a family member has been killed on duty. With Valence are Master Sgt. Tim Ellenbecker, left, and Gunnery Sgt. Charlie White.

INDIAN HARBOUR BEACH, Fla. (KRT) - It was a routine afternoon for Nina Schrage, full of errands and deadlines, including a rush to mail a package to her son in Iraq.

She shipped the parcel in time but then noticed that she had a call on her cell phone from her 16-year-old daughter.

Men in military uniforms had come to their home, her daughter told her, but they wouldn't say why. "They wanted to know when dad would be home."

Schrage could feel panic overtaking the fear that had been gnawing inside her since her 20-year-old son Marine Cpl. Dustin Schrage left for Iraq.

At home Schrage called Camp Pendleton in California, where Dustin's unit, the 2nd Battalion of the 4th Marine Regiment, was based. She asked the Marine who answered: Was someone trying to find her? Had something happened to her son?

The Marine said to hold, and Schrage paced frantically while she waited. It seemed as if she had been on hold forever, and then there was the sound of car doors out front.

"Hang up," Schrage's husband, Preston, told her. "They're here."

She watched the Marine Corps officer walk into their home, heard him say, "We are here to inform you that your son, Cpl. Dustin Schrage, ..." and Nina Schrage knew what must be coming.

Like every parent with a child at war, everyone with a loved one in harm's way, she had known that the end could be exactly like this.

"If they come to your house, you know they're going to tell you the worst news you can hear," Schrage said. "They're like the Grim Reaper."

More than 1,500 U.S. troops have died in Iraq since the war began two years ago. And in a ritual carefully prescribed by each branch of the military service, every death has been followed by the appearance on someone's doorstep of a small, somber group of people in uniform whose very presence tells loved ones their worst fears are true.

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