"Iraq war’s end bring new grief to mother who lost son" January 26, 2012|By Brian MacQuarrie
WINSLOW, Maine - When the last American troops left Iraq in December, the war began anew for Nancy Chamberlain.
Her son, Marine helicopter pilot Jay Aubin, had crashed and died in a sandstorm on the first night of the 2003 invasion. Eleven siblings rushed to comfort her. Tom Brokaw called to interview her.
Later, the attention that came with being one of the first American mothers to lose a child in the war helped distract her.
But her cocoon of self-protection shattered last month when the news media, usually more focused on Afghanistan, redirected its attention to the withdrawal from Iraq and reminded Americans of the country’s losses there.
“When they announced that all the troops were coming home, I lost it,’’ said Chamberlain, 69, a retired nurse. “My son wasn’t coming home, and that was the first time I let it sink in. I’ve just had this tremendous sadness.’’
Aubin, a 36-year-old captain, died with three other US Marines and eight British commandos on the night of March 20, 2003, in an American helicopter flying from Kuwait to Iraq. They were the first allied fatalities of the war, the first US service members of 4,484 who would die in a protracted and controversial struggle whose legacy remains unclear....
Legacy remains unclear? My war paper here told me we won!
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How many Iraqis did we kill?
