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The Military Heroism of ‘Casualty Notification Officers’
They call on families of the fallen, bringing the news everyone dreads, yet few people know of their work
Military heroism doesn’t occur only in distant wars. It shows up in the everyday lives of veterans or active-duty service members whose work calls for extraordinary skill, courage, and dedication.
Jim Sheeler focuses on one of them, Maj. Steve Beck of the Marine Corps, in his wonderful Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives, which grew out of a Pulitzer Prize–winning series for the Rocky Mountain News. Beck is a “casualty notification officer,” a service member who calls on relatives of the fallen to them that a family member has died in the line of duty.
Jobs like Beck’s didn’t always exist in the Armed Forces. As heartless as it might seem today, the military once announced combat deaths in telegrams or brief sympathy letters that left relatives alone in their sorrow.
Near the end of the Vietnam War, the government changed its policy and instead began sending two-person teams of uniformed officers to deliver the news. Sheeler doesn’t say so, but newspapers have reported that the notification policy changed partly because as Western Union offices became fewer, the military started asking taxi…
