By Jodie Tillman

Valley News Staff Writer

When a small state sent its citizens off to war this month, it looked like this.

A fire department showed up at the deployment ceremony to see off two of its members. Others arrived to say farewell to three pals from the same high school class. And Robyn Jenks stood among the scattering crowd of families and neighbors and wept.

The stories of soldiers who lost their lives in Iraq had weighed on her mind as she watched her boyfriend, David Werdelin, walk out the door with his fellow Vermont National Guard troops at the send-off ceremony in Essex Junction.

“I don't want to think about it,” said Jenks, a former Lyme resident who now lives in Putney, Vt. “But he might not come back.”

As the war grinds on, a growing list of families and towns have learned they lost a soldier or Marine. And as that list has grown, some have begun to question whether Vermont -- with 11 residents killed and roughly 40 injured -- has paid an unfairly heavy price.

“This small state of Vermont has borne a very heavy burden in this war,” said Vermont Congressman Bernie Sanders, “both in terms of (those) killed and injured.”

To get a sense of whether facts back such perceptions, the Valley News analyzed government figures on war-related deaths and nonfatal injuries. By a number of measures using conservative figures (see related story), Vermont has suffered higher casualty rates than most other states.

According to the analysis, Vermont has:

·* The highest death rate of any state among soldiers and Marines deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan between March 1, 2003, and October 31, 2004: 5.6 per 1,000 troops. That's more than three times the national average and more than four times higher than New Hampshire's rate. Only the District of Columbia had a higher death rate.

·* The highest number of deaths when measured against state population. As of Jan. 8, Vermont had 1.64 military deaths per 100,000 residents, more than three times the national average. New Hampshire, meanwhile, ranked 27th with .49 deaths per 100,000 residents.

·* The second highest nonfatal injuries per capita: 5.91 per 100,000 residents, compared to the national average of 2.82 per 100,000. As of Jan. 8, Arkansas had the highest injury rate (6.43 per 100,000 residents) and New Hampshire had the fifth highest injury rate, 4.53 per 100,000.

“It's not surprising to me (that Vermont has a high casualty rate) just because Vermont does have a significant tradition of military support,” said Clayton Clark, the state's veterans program coordinator. “It is surprising to me that we are as high as we are.”

Lt. Col. Joe Richard, the Pentagon spokesman who provided deployment figures used in the analysis, said parsing out deaths in a state-by-state breakdown did not adequately account for statistical variables and amounted to saying “one state is sacrificing more than another state.”

“It's not an accurate depiction, and it does a disservice,” he said. “To place it in some kind of geographical context doesn't serve anything.”

Gregory Leibon, a visiting professor in Dartmouth College's mathematics department who reviewed the Valley News findings, said the numbers of soldiers killed or injured is too small to draw broad conclusions, including whether Vermont soldiers are more likely to die. He noted that the addition or subtraction of a few deaths or injuries could change rankings.

“On statistical grounds, you could not reject the notion that it's not just bad luck,” said Leibon.

New Hampshire's death rate among deployed soldiers and Marines -- 1.2 per 1,000 soldiers -- is strikingly different from Vermont's, but the difference could likely be a result of how the numbers work. During that time period, New Hampshire suffered four fewer deaths than did Vermont -- but out of a much larger group of military personnel, 4, 164 to Vermont's 1,613.

Small states such as Vermont (roughly 600,000 residents) often have a relatively large number of casualties, said Edward Miguel of the University of California at Berkeley, an economics professor who looked at state-by-state per capita death rates in Iraq for a recent study.

In the per capita death rate analysis, for instance, sparsely populated North Dakota and Wyoming have the second- and third-highest rates behind Vermont.

The Guard Serves

Statistical chance isn't the only explanation. There's also the fact that National Guard troops are playing a significant role in the Iraq war, experts say.

Overall, states' National Guard members account for 40 percent of military personnel in Iraq. While a traditional Army or Marine combat unit might draw on men and women from around the nation, a National Guard unit draws heavily from one geographic region.

“When (National Guard units) take a hit,” said Lt. Veronica Saffo, spokeswoman for Vermont National Guard, “it affects the whole state.”

Leibon, the Dartmouth professor who reviewed the Valley News analysis of deaths, said he was struck by the role that the heavy National Guard presence might be playing.

Deaths from many states seemed higher than his statistical analysis expected, he said, most likely because National Guard units are made up of people from the same state. So when a unit sees multiple deaths during a particular mission, that state's rate soars.

Earlier this month, for instance, Louisiana suffered a blow when six guardsmen from that state were killed in a single bomb blast in Iraq. Less than a week later, two more Louisiana guardsmen were killed.

That happened on a smaller scale in Vermont when two guardsmen based in Williston, Vt. -- Alan Bean of Bridport and Kevin Sheehan of Milton -- were killed when their unit came under mortar attack on May 25, 2004.

Two other guardsmen who were part of the same Williston unit died on separate occasions, one of an apparent heart attack while in Kuwait, the other when his military vehicle hit an explosive device.

Saffo, the Vermont National Guard spokeswoman, said the number of deaths among the Williston unit did not suggest to her that Vermonters were being put in riskier situations than other state's units. (The Williston soldiers were serving as military police.) Again, she said, it comes down to the way statistics work.

“It's really hard to give a scientific answer,” she said.

Not included in the analysis of the death rate among soldiers and Marines are two more recent deaths, including that of a local Marine, 20-year-old Jeffery Holmes of Hartford, and 24-year-old Jesse Strong, a 24-year-old Marine reservist from Albany, Vt.

On the New Hampshire side, two more recent deaths are also not included: Manchester Marine Adam Brooks last November and Merrimack Marine Timothy Gibson last week.

Of Vermont residents serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, about 44 percent were National Guard or Reserve members between March 1, 2003, and October 31, 2004, the time period for which such figures were available.

In New Hampshire, about 38 percent of the deployed military personnel during that time were National Guard or Reserve members.

That is compared to a state with military bases, such as California, where 23 percent of the deployed personnel were National Guard or Reserve.

According to the 2004 National Guard Almanac, Vermont has the fourth-highest Guard participation rate in the country -- 530 per 100,000 residents.

At least one Vermont peace group is pointing to numbers to make the case against the war. The American Friends Service Committee cited Vermont's military deaths in asking Gov. Jim Douglas to call on President Bush to bring home the state's guardsmen and stop further deployments.

The recent send-off of 340 guardsmen means nearly 1,400 of the state's Guard members have been deployed.

“Vermont has paid a high price,” said Joseph Gainza, the executive director of the Montpelier-based group. “We feel it's too high a price.”

Jason Gibbs, spokesman for Douglas, said the governor has no legal authority to resist a National Guard call-up unless he can demonstrate that it puts the state at risk of not being able to respond to emergencies. Douglas is comfortable with the current level of Guard members left in the state, he said.

“It's very troubling to the governor that so many Vermonters have given their lives,” he said. “It's hard to explain except to say many Vermonters have volunteered to serve their state and nation and defend the ideals of liberty.”

Rural areas

Another possible factor in casualty rates from a state such as Vermont is the fact that it is rural. Other studies of Iraq war deaths have found that troops who hail from small rural areas are shouldering a heavier burden of war.

An ongoing study by sociologist Robert Cushing for the Austin American-Statesman newspaper, for instance, has found that soldiers and Marines from small, rural areas are dying at disproportionately high rates when compared to those from cities and suburbs.

The newspaper reported in October 2003, the most recent date that could be obtained, that those who died in Iraq were 39 percent more likely than the nation as a whole to live in counties with fewer than 100,000 people.

And U.S. Rep. Ike Skelton, a Missouri Democrat, had his office cross-reference the hometowns of troops who've been killed in Iraq with Census data.

His researchers found that 43 percent of the dead were from communities with populations under 20,000. By contrast, Census figures show only 22.5 percent of Americans live in towns with fewer than 20,000 people.

Such studies point to who is serving in the military and putting their lives at risk, said Lara Battles, a spokeswoman for Skelton's office. The congressman is concerned that some segments of society -- such as rural and working-class -- are sacrificing more than others when it comes to war, she said.

Skelton and Rep. Charles Rangel of New York sent a letter to the General Accounting Office last May requesting a study on the racial, ethnic, gender and socioeconomic makeup of military forces.

The office agreed to do it this year, once money is available, said Battles.

The rural explanation seems to make sense, said Saffo. For many “blue-collar ... patriotic” people who live in Vermont's rural towns, she said, the military represents a career opportunity.

Naturally, if those young people leave home for war and lose their lives, the impact is huge in their hometowns, said Clark, the Vermont state veterans official.

“I think Vermont has so much of its population in small towns,” he said. “I think what that means is that … it's not like we live in cities where there are nameless people.”

‘Your Soldier'

But statistics, of course, are only part of the story -- and for grieving families, not the most important part.

“What matters is your soldier,” said Sgt. Mike Daigle of the New Hampshire National Guard.

Scott and Patti Holmes of White River Junction know firsthand the pain behind the numbers. Their happy-go-lucky son, Jeffery, the one whose stony-faced Marine photograph gave no hint of the young man who could lighten the mood of any room, is among the 11 Vermonters who've died.

In the nearly two months since his death, the Holmeses and their 17-year-old son, Cory, have struggled with the loss of Jeffery's vivacious presence.

Christmas morning, the three drove out to his gravesite at the Vermont Veterans Cemetery in Randolph Center. No one else was there for a while, and they stood there and sang Christmas carols. Somewhere in the middle of Jingle Bells, they forgot the words, and Cory remarked that his brother was watching them and laughing, Patti Holmes recalled.

And there are the little things that remind them of their son. Patti Holmes heard the national anthem playing on the radio station around 6 a.m. and suddenly remembered how Jeffery would loudly sing that song in the shower.

Before his death, they had started remodeling his bedroom so that the boy who'd slept on a twin bed all his life “could finally have a ‘big boy' bed,” said Scott Holmes. The room is nearly finished now.

The couple keep a book by Christian author Max Lucado on a coffee table, along with another one about losing loved ones. Sometimes they pick up the books and read a chapter or two and feel more at peace. “ ‘God never said the journey would be easy,' ” Patti Holmes read aloud the other night.

The Holmeses also take comfort that their son had wanted to be a Marine and knew the risks. They believe his death was in service of a greater cause, and in the aftermath of his death, they've become more emboldened by that.

Scott Holmes said he saw some protesters in Hanover recently, waving antiwar signs. “They didn't have one ‘support the troops' sign,” he said.

Before his son's death, he would have just driven by and groused to himself and friends. But that day, he approached one of the protesters and told her about his son's death. He asked them why they didn't have a support the troops sign, and the young woman promised they would have one at their next protest.

“I drove by the next week, and they had one,” he said.

“It's like Jeff said, if we're fighting over there at least we're not fighting here,” said Patti Holmes.

And living in a small town has had benefits for the family, the Holmeses said. People have dropped by, sent cards, let them know they care.

“It's part of being a community,” said Scott Holmes. “We all share the ups and downs.”

Dorothy Halvorsen of Bennington, Vt., understands the Holmeses' loss. Her son, Erik, a 40-year-old Army helicopter pilot, was the first Vermonter killed in Iraq, in April 2003.

So there was the first Christmas without him, the day she stopped buying things for him, the afternoon a plaque bearing his name came in the mail: So many of her days for the last nearly two years are marked by her son's absence.

But time has also been marked by her struggles to deal with her own misgivings about the war.

She regularly scans the Internet about the war and peace efforts and reads the Web site of a group called Gold Star Families for Peace. She signed up to get on the organization's e-mail list, and wrote an e-mail to an Iraqi woman to tell her she was sorry about the loss of Iraqi civilian life.

She's signed a few petitions about bringing home the troops, but she hasn't actively opposed the war.

“It's something I do quietly,” said Halvorsen. But she's thought about becoming more outspoken. “Sometimes you wonder if that would give you some satisfaction.”

Dorothy Halvorsen said she had heard about Vermont's high ranking when it comes to the number of deaths per capita.

“Yes, we've lost a lot,” she said, “but the bigger picture is why are we in this war?”

* THE ANALYSIS:

The Valley News used two different Department of Defense sources to determine the state-by-state death rates of deployed soldiers and Marines.

One source obtained from the Pentagon was the state-by-state breakdown of deployed soldiers and Marines, which include full-time, reserve and National Guard personnel.

For the deployment report, the Pentagon would not separate figures for Iraq and Afghanistan and provided numbers only for a particular time period: from March 2003 -- the beginning of the Iraq war -- to October 31, 2004.

The second source, which is available on the Pentagon Web site, was a state-by-state breakdown of military deaths in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

To calculate the death rate, the Valley News divided the number of deaths a particular state suffered between March 1, 2003, and October 31, 2004, by the number of that state's residents who were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan during that same period.

That meant the analysis had to exclude deaths in Afghanistan before March 2003 as well as deaths in both theaters after October 31, 2004.

At the request of the Valley News, Gregory Leibon, a visiting professor in Dartmouth College's mathematics department, conducted a statistical analysis of the figures and found that the differences among the states could be due merely to chance. In a statistical world, the numbers are just too small to draw any conclusions or make predictions, he said.

The Valley News provided a copy of the analysis to Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Joe Richard, who said the numbers were factually correct, but “statistically, there's nothing to draw from this.”

While The Associated Press last week put the number of people with Vermont ties who've died while deployed to Iraq at 15, the Valley News used a lower number by counting only those who listed Vermont as their home state on military records.

By that estimate, there are now 11 Vermonters who have died while serving in Iraq.

The other two charts -- deaths per capita and injuries per capita -- are a look at the number of a state's residents who have either died or been injured while deployed to Iraq as a percentage of that state's 2000 Census population.

Both deaths and injuries are as of Jan. 8, the most recent date for which the Pentagon figures are tallied in state-by-state format.

For full charts containing the numbers used on the story, see the Web at

www.vnews.com/war/percapitadeaths.htm

www.vnews.com/war/percapitainjuries.htm

www.vnews.com/war/deathsper1000deployed.htm

www.vnews.com/war/guardparticipation.htm