A Marine Casualty Call – The Difficult Job of a Casualty Assistance Officer
Marine NCOs and Officers are busy this week doing the most grueling job of their lives–notifying next of kin that their son or daughter will not be coming home. I asked my friend, Mark Thompson, who left the Marine Corps as a Major and served in the U.S. Department of State as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Counter Terrorism, to tell me about his experience with delivering this kind of bad news.
The following is Mark’s account of one mission to honor a fallen Marine. I wish Mark was still with the Government. We need men like him at the wall.
By Mark Thompson
It is said once a Marine, always a Marine. That phrase certainly proved true as I first heard of the Marines and Sailor who were killed at the Kabul Airport.
