No news is good news

(Lieutenant Colonel Ronald Westfall)

Camp Speicher, Iraq- A soldier’s wife hears about an IED attack on her husband’s unit, she passes the news to another soldier’s wife. Pretty soon a dozen families are in panic. Is my husband ok? Why weren’t we notified?

It’s the kind of rumor mill that spins out of control. “We’ve had it happen twice already,” said Lieutenant Colonel Ronald A. Westfall, Commander of the 1st/151st Infantry Battalion out of Jasper, IN.

Westfall said the first time he was in Iraq in 2003, there was one computer and one phone for an entire battalion of 600 soldiers.

Now with many of his troops’ rooms wired, soldiers don’t even have to step outside to send an email home.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” said Lt. Col. Westfall. It’s good that a soldier can get in contact with their loved ones, he said, but sometimes soldiers talk too much about their missions, scaring family members who don’t know the whole story.

“Stuff will happen every day, but if there’s no damage, families don’t need to know,” Westfall said bluntly.

The commanding officer is not being insensitive. He’s being realistic. “I tell the families it works both ways,” Westfall said. “He (or she) doesn’t need to worry about the broken water heater at home,” and by contrast the family doesn’t need to worry about an attack that might have been exaggerated several times by the time they hear the story.

He emphasized that the 1/151st soldiers who go outside the wire on convoy security missions are cocooned in 4-inches of metal plating and have undergone counter-IED training for the past three months.

Still, when a soldier faces enemy fire for the first time, it's natural he would want to tell those who he's closest to.

Westfall is not just lamenting a difficult situation. He tries to counteract the gossip chain by putting out a weekly newsletter. The captains of each company also write company letters that are mailed to all the soldiers’ families through the Family Readiness Group.

This is not unusual, but the thoroughness and frequency of such communication is.

Staff Sergeant Zachary Fromme, 26, of St. Anthony, IN, tells his 24 soldiers, “to play things down,” to their families. He said many young soldiers have a natural tendency to exaggerate. Fromme uses examples from his previous two combat deployments. “Look, don’t go home making up stories. Don’t be like so-and-so,” he said

Sergeant First Class Dennis Roggenkamp, 37, of Tell City said, “The old white fence gossip, now it’s on the internet.” Roggenkamp, who has 20 years in the military and six deployments said his wife doesn’t ask too many operational questions and doesn’t believe the rumors.

(Staff Sergeant Zach Fromme, 26, about to bat in the Speicher softball league.)

On the subject of how much he tells his wife, Fromme said, “I tell her what we do to drive and come back. Maybe it’s kind of hiding the truth, but I don’t need her freaking out everyday. She’s got other things to deal with,” Fromme, whose his wife is eight months pregnant said.

“If you don’t control the rumor mill, it will eat you alive,” Lt. Col. Westfall said. I tell them (the families), if you have a question talk to the Family Readiness Group or me, or it’s not true.”

Staff Sgt. Fromme takes a veteran’s view of the war. “I could go the whole year with nothing happening and that would be more than fine with me.”