America’s sons and daughters traditionally fight our Nation’s wars.  Recently, however, an unprecedented number of those sons and daughters are also moms and dads.  In the recent Iraq war, Scripps Howard News reported over 1,600 children lost at least one parent, with half of those children being under ten years of age.  The fact is our military has had an increasing reliance on reserve troops in combat roles, U.S. soldiers of late tend to be older and have more children.

 According to a New York Times article on the subject the violence of a father’s death, and its public nature, can be especially troublesome for children. "It's a traumatic grief that is highly publicized," said Linda Goldman, a grief specialist. "Dad was murdered in a public way. This heightens the sense of trauma because it never goes away."

The children's mothers say the deaths have had expected repercussions, like plummeting grades and mood swings. But they have also seen unexpected reactions. Madison Swisher, 8, who sleeps in her father's T-shirt, is afraid of loud noises; her dad died in Iraq from an improvised bomb. She and her younger brother talk a lot about bombs in general. They call the Iraqis the "bad guys" and are afraid the bad guys will arrive any minute.

Several mothers said they worried that their children's hero worship, a healthy balm in the beginning, could turn problematic if they tried to follow in their fathers' footsteps.

Teenagers, in particular, have trouble adjusting. Scott Rentschler, 14, was living on a military base in Germany when his father, Staff Sgt. George Rentschler, was killed in Iraq in 2004 by a rocket-propelled grenade. His life, Scott said, "is a roller coaster." Scott's grandmother, Lillian Rentschler, said that moving off a military base was difficult for him, and that society and schools make few allowances for children in their second year of grief.  "People think he should be all fixed up," Ms. Rentschler said.

Parents and mentors say they try to help the children stay connected to their fathers and grieve in intimate ways, far from the public eye. They post photographs all over the house, make teddy bears out of their dads' shirts and encourage them to write letters.

Eddie Murphy, 10, whose father, Maj. Edward Murphy, 36, died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan in April 2005, did just that one day at grief camp. "Summer is coming up," he wrote to his father. "It won't be the same without you. You won't believe it but I'm in Washington."  He signed off: "I love you. Hi  to Heaven."  Abraham Lincoln once said, "War at the best is terrible."  For the children of those lost to war this cannot be truer.  Gradually a child begins to grasp death as an inevitable part of life and begin to retain the best and happiest memories they had with their lost parent.  The letters sent home, the pictures and the everlasting bond of a child to a parent never leaves.