The final roll call

Every month, a voice rings from the back of a Fort Hood chapel with the names of soldiers who won't be coming home

By Denise Gamino

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF   
December 12, 2004

FORT HOOD -- Sgt. Maj. Tobris Chandler chooses his location with care. Army regulation 165-1 calls for him to stand at the front of the 1st Cavalry Division Memorial Chapel to perform his duty. But war trumps this rule.

Chandler can't bear to be up front, staring into the faces of hundreds of solemn soldiers and, even worse, the rows of families whose darlings didn't make it out of Iraq alive.

He stands, instead, as far from the front as possible, in the last seat in the last pew in this hallowed chapel filled with names of the dead. The side walls are covered in long, bronze tablets listing the 10,383 soldiers of the 1st Cavalry killed in four previous wars: World War II, Korea, Vietnam and Desert Storm.

So many names they take your breath away. Enough names to populate a small town. Or several sprawling cemeteries.

None of the one-third-inch, raised names includes a military rank. It's no longer necessary. Nobody, the Army says, needs a rank in heaven.

Finding space for a new plaque to list the dead from Iraq will be a challenge.

So many names since March, when Fort Hood's 1st Cavalry went to Iraq. More than 100 soldiers have died fighting with the 1st Cavalry, which, at 17,000-plus members, is the largest division in the U.S. Army.

So many names that the 1st Cavalry holds a special military ceremony once a month to memorialize the latest war dead. The next one will be Thursday.

So many names a high-level decision was made to use just one pair of empty boots, one helmet and one M-16 rifle as the main display in the chapel every month. It would be too disturbing to see the customary set of equipment for each dead soldier -- 17 in one ceremony alone.

So many names they haunt Chandler at all hours.

He is guardian of the names.

Chandler is a 28-year veteran of the Army, son of a career Army man and the great-grandson of a Confederate soldier wounded at Gettysburg. He's 47 years old and never had a job in the civilian world. He's been a drill sergeant. He's been a tank commander. He served in Bosnia. He served in Kuwait.

He's been shot at by the enemy but never hit.

Until now. He's taken a hit in this war in Iraq, but the wound is on the inside. In the center of his heart, the emotional bull's-eye.

"Everybody who wears the uniform I consider my family. You never want nothing to happen to your family," he says. "And that's what gets me. I think of them as my sons and daughters."

Chandler has six children and four grandchildren, with another on the way. All three of his sons-in-law are soldiers who served in Iraq and made it back.

No one expected so many 1st Cavalry deaths in the first weeks of boots on the ground. But within days of arriving in Iraq last spring, an ambush killed seven soldiers and wounded 50. It took three days just to notify families.

The pace of death, it became obvious, would mean holding memorial services at Fort Hood every few weeks for the 1st Cavalry's fallen.

Chandler must memorize each name, which he receives a few days before a service. He goes into his back yard after work and speaks the names of the dead aloud. Sometimes, he repeats the names in his living room. Or in his office. Or while driving his pickup.

He practices the names anywhere and anytime he can. He knows from the drill sergeant days that if he gets hoarse a little squirt of lemon juice from a plastic bottle will clear it up.

He wants the names to sound perfect when he pronounces them at the memorial service.

After the 1st Cavalry's rear commander speaks, after each soldier is eulogized by a fellow soldier, after a scripture reading, after "America the Beautiful," and after the chaplain speaks and leads a prayer, the gathered mourners stand in quiet tribute to the newly fallen.

Chandler puts on his glasses and counts to himself. One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three . . . four . . . five . . . six . . . seven . . . eight . . . nine . . . 10.

His voice, flavored with a trace of his rural Alabama childhood, breaks the silence from the back of the chapel. Chandler is 6 feet, 3 inches tall and 230 pounds. He hardly needed his drill sergeant school lessons on how to make sure he is heard 100 yards away.

"Sergeant First Class Michael Battles," Chandler announces at November's ceremony.

The long, slow roll call of the dead has begun.

His strong, sure voice startles many in the chapel. Immediately, the soldiers straighten to ramrod attention. The quiet crying stops.

Chandler pauses.

"Specialist Jaime Moreno," he announces.

Most of our guys are children, he thinks, 17 or 18 or 25 years old and we expect them to deal with the harsh situation without making a mistake. I know they volunteered to come into the military. They didn't volunteer to go over there.

Pause.

"Captain Dennis Pintor."

A West Point graduate. Eulogized as a leader among peers by a soldier friend who cried and had to stop to wipe his face.

Pause.

"Private Carson Ramsey."

Is he married? Does he have children? Chandler asks himself. I hope for his family that everything goes OK.

Pause.

"Specialist Jeremy Regnier."

Chandler is flashing back to television news clips of the bloody war in Iraq. All he sees are U.S. soldiers, fighting for their lives so far from home.

Pause.

"Specialist Michael Weger."

After six names, Chandler is quiet. He's done his duty, though from an unorthodox spot. It was the only place he could honor the dead without choking back tears, the only place he could bear to be.

Outside, a squad in the shade of a tree fires off a rifle volley. A lone bugler on the sunny sidewalk plays the mournful notes of taps.

Chandler's roll call will not be the last time the names of the dead echo in this cinderblock chapel. Some day, maybe as early as June, the soldiers who gave wh

at Abraham Lincoln called the "last full measure of devotion" will be frozen in history on a new bronze tablet.

So many names.

dgamino@statesman.com; 445-3675