This VA Watchdog.org article took me by surprise, I have seen the trees at Fort Stewart, they started this during the First Gulf War as a way to memoralize the posts soldiers who died in service to the nation and as members of Fort Stewart, the 24th Infantry Division started the honor in 1991. The 3rd Infantry Division chose to continue this during the Iraq War.
The family members of Pfc. Ryan D. Christensen feel like they have been slapped in the face
Pfc. Ryan D. Christensen died at a South Carolina hospital on Thanksgiving Day in 2005, a victim of a bacterial infection contracted while working as a communications specialist with the 3rd Infantry Division. But since it was an illness — rather than an improvised explosive device or suicide bomber — that claimed his life, the Army has declined to plant a tree in his honor along what is known as Warriors' Walk at Fort Stewart.
"Unless you're shot or blown up, you don't get a tree," said Christensen's stepfather, Mark Detulio. "It is a major, major slap in the face."
By all accounts, Christensen should be a poster child for a war now in its fifth year of combat operations. Spurred on by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, he carried a collection of photos of ground zero with him at all times and enlisted in the Army at age 19, eager to do his part to defeat terrorism.
Over less than three weeks in the fall of 2005, however, his health failed him. What began as a salmon-colored skin rash rapidly progressed into liver failure and eventually, a fatal brain hemorrhage.
"It was all so fast, especially for someone who never had a health problem," Mark Detulio said.
After months of appeals for a tree planting at Warriors' Walk, the couple received a letter from an Army official in February stating their son's death was officially considered "non-combat" related, thus making him ineligible to receive a planting.
Refusing Christensen what the family views as an entitled place of honor alongside his fellow fallen brethren has been hard to accept and complicated the grieving process.
"You just can't get any closure,"Mark Detulio said.
The no-tree edict is especially puzzling, the couple says, in contrast to dozens of support and condolence letters received from military officials and politicians, including President Bush and Army commanders.
"You can't have it both ways. You can't say, "Thank you for your service and sacrifice for your country,' and then say it's not related to combat," Suzette Detulio said. "He died because he was there."
There has been support for the effort to include Christensen in the Warriors Walk from local politicians. Rep. Christopher H. Smith, R-N.J., has advocated strongly for it, the Detulios say, but to no avail.
"The military has consistently come back and said, "No,' " said Smith's district director, Pidge Carroll. "We'll keep working on it, and hopefully it will come to fruition."
Most frustrating and puzzling, Carroll said, is the military's focus on the semantics separating Christensen's death from others deployed in theater.
"It's just words," she said.
Come on Army, honor the man and plant a tree in his name on Fort Stewart, if they die in service while assigned to the post it's the least you can do, why insult the families this way?Sphere: Related Content
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