Battles Without End

Like all such events in the past, The War on Terror will produce it's share of stories - some tragic, some comic, all amazing. Many will be the tale of the fallen hero - but here are three that show that the story rarely ends there:

The San Francisco Chronicle

More than two weeks after he was killed while pulling fellow soldiers from a burning vehicle in Iraq, the body of Army Staff Sgt. Jason Hendrix remains caught in a legal limbo created by a battle between his divorced parents over who has the right to bury his remains.

Renee Amick wants her 28-year-old son buried near her home in Freedom (Santa Cruz County), near where he was born and raised and spent his first two years of high school. She has obtained a temporary restraining order keeping his body in California and has enlisted the help of her local congressman, who questioned top Army brass on the matter this week.

Russell Hendrix of Claremore, Okla., believes his son should be returned to the state where he graduated from high school and enlisted in the Army more than a decade ago to lie beside the remains of his grandfather, a Marine. The elder Hendrix has gone to court to be named administrator of his son's estate.

I wonder if anyone asked the guys in his unit if he ever expressed a preference? Arlington National Cemetary, anyone?

The New York Daily News

Red tape is keeping the mother and siblings of a Queens soldier killed in Iraq from coming to the U.S. from Pakistan to bury the war hero.

The agony of National Guardsman Azhar Ali's family has been compounded by harassment they've been getting in Pakistan because the soldier fought for America, said City Councilman John Liu (D-Queens).

And kudos to Senator Clinton, who's also taking action.

Finally, one Mrs G linked earlier:

Twelve-year-old Sidney Kamolvathin lost her mother to cancer in 2000 and her father to a heart attack in 2003, and then her only sibling headed off to war.

Sidney and her 21-year-old brother, Alain, had been living apart since their parents died, she with a guardian in New Jersey, he with relatives in Ozone Park in Queens.

Alain departed for Iraq last fall, saying his combat pay and the money he saved on living expenses would allow him to buy a small house when he returned. He promised they would soon be able to live together again.

"His whole goal - and everything he did - was geared to gain custody of his sister," a cousin would tell a reporter.

When he was able, Alain telephoned Sidney, the voice of the only surviving member of her immediate family crackling over the line. He had originally joined the National Guard at the urging of his father, who surely did not foresee he would follow his wife to an early grave and his son would be calling his orphaned daughter from a war zone.

In December, Alain's vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device. He was not hurt badly enough as to be sent home, although the injury was serious enough that Sidney reportedly told friends at school her brother would be getting a Purple Heart.

On Jan. 16, Alain's vehicle overturned into a drainage ditch in Baghdad. He was killed along with another soldier from the 1st Battalion, 69th Infantry Regiment of the New York National Army Guard, the renowned "Fighting 69th."

At the funeral, the honor guard handed Sidney the folded flag that had covered her brother's coffin, but military officials subsequently ruled that she was not eligible for the survivor's benefits that are due the spouse and children of a soldier killed in action.

There's got to be a lot more to that story - I hope we eventually hear it.