How many more of these deaths must our nation endure? What kind of changed men and women are returning from this war? How many families will suffer this grief and deal with the pain as this quagmire endures? How many times will the White House change its story on why we went to war in Iraq?


A Marine Is Killed in Iraq, and Grief Ripples at Home
By SARAH KERSHAW

PORTLAND, Ore., July 24 — His family wanted a "showboat funeral" for Cpl. Travis J. Bradach-Nall, a 21-year-old marine who was killed in Iraq clearing mines on July 1. And that meant hiring stretch limousines.

It took seven to carry them all: Uncle John, Uncle James, Uncle Joel, Uncle Sam, Uncle Mike, Aunt Katie, Aunt Molly, Aunt Laurie, Aunt Sally and her husband, Uncle Frank — 18 aunts and uncles in all.

Then there were the cousins, dozens of them, including Jack, Christopher and Riley, who as boys traveled with Travis in a pack of four. There was Bobby, the baby sitter, and James, Travis's close friend from Grant High School, who set off a tall pile of fireworks last week — "a 21, two-liter-bomb salute," he called it — to say goodbye to Travis with 30 of his friends.

At the head of the procession, of course, was Corporal Bradach-Nall's mother, Lynn Bradach, 51, and his younger brother, Nick Nall, 19, the two people at the center of this wide circle of sadness, a close-knit clan of more than 100 relatives and friends in Portland rippling now with the grief of one marine's death.

Corporal Bradach-Nall's mother and brother were among those most relieved that he had made it through the war itself — all 37 marines in his unit, Second Platoon, Charlie Company, came out alive, surviving a harrowing ambush near Nasiriya in southern Iraq in late March.

And they are the two who perhaps wish most desperately that Corporal Bradach-Nall had not volunteered to stay on for an extra three months, instead of returning safely with the others on June 21...




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