Grim Task: Notifying Fallen Soldiers' Families

Working With Families for Months

Beville, 43, who is currently a children's pastor with the Church of Nazarene, believes he was selected due to his maturity and his religious training. "It's very emotional, and it helps to have an understanding of spiritual things."

He has helped families with financial assistance, life insurance, burial and funeral arrangements, given them rides to Veterans Affairs offices and made arrangements with credit card companies and mortgage firms.

Once, Beville went to talk to the principal of the middle school attended by a fallen soldier's son, who was having a rough time. Another time, he called a bank that had given an auto loan to a soldier's spouse to help her sell her car back.

In most cases, the officers spend three to six months helping the family, and they often receive kind words of appreciation. "They were glad that I was there. It gave them peace of mind," says Beville.

Notification officers are given strict instructions not to "extend overly sympathetic gestures that may be taken the wrong way," not to pass on "gory or embarrassing details" and not to "physically touch the NOK [next of kin] unless there is shock or fainting."

The job is not without peril, especially when dealing with distraught spouses.

"There are lots of times where they will just want to hit them or cuss them out and be extremely angry, " says Beville. "That's why there are two people who go together and sometimes a chaplain goes with them. It is definitely one of the hardest jobs."

Sometimes it's hard to find the spouse, he adds, noting that the notification officer on one of his cases had to go to a hotel in Las Vegas to inform the vacationing wife about the loss of her husband.

Learning Through Letters

The process has come a long way since the early days of the American military. During the Civil War, families only found out about their fallen husbands and sons by getting letters from fellow soldiers or reading the listings posted at their local train station, according to Michael Sledge, the author of "Soldier Dead: How We Recover, Identify, Bury and Honor Our Military Fallen."