Military Has Lost 2,000 In Iraq

Five more soldiers from Charlie Company had died the day before.

Jessica Wiegand, 21, of Great Bend was about to leave her home for the Evans viewing when a car pulled up and a uniformed officer got out. She knew immediately that her husband, Spec. Lee A. Wiegand, 20, wasn't coming home.

In the days after Evans's death, Jessica Wiegand had noticed a change in the tone of her husband's Internet messages; he had gone from excited about what he was doing to increasingly scared about what might happen.

"He just kept telling me that he loved me and that he would be coming home," Wiegand said, her 5-month-old daughter, Jordan, cooing in the next room. Lee Wiegand saw his daughter only briefly after he was mobilized to deploy. "No one expected anything like this to happen, even with what happened to Bil. It wasn't going to happen to this town again."

The news that five more soldiers had died spread through the viewing line at Evans's church, and more than 2,000 people streamed in over more than eight hours. Those who attended said they were stunned. Many people say, even a month later, that they are still numb.

Donald Littleton, pastor of the United Community Methodist Church in Great Bend, said people have been grappling to describe how the town has changed. He said he believes people have been deeply emotionally affected by the deaths, in part because the war is no longer an abstract concept in the news, but "it's now on our doorstep, it's here, and we have to realize that the war is real."

Sgt. 1st Class James B. Ditchey has felt the losses intensely because he recruited into the Guard all but one of the six soldiers, and he considered all of them family. He said the community has in some ways lost its naivete.

"I never ever thought that I'd have to bury any of my privates. Never," Ditchey said. "My biggest fear was having to face a family like this because I know all the families. I've now had to face it six times."

News has been similarly grim in Maryland, which in the past two weeks lost five service members: three National Guardsmen, a Marine and an active-duty soldier. Since the war started, 84 troops from Maryland, Virginia and the District have died, including six in the National Guard and four reservists, according to records compiled by The Washington Post. Virginia has lost 53 troops, Maryland 28. Three from D.C. have died.

The 2,000 mark was recorded yesterday in counts kept by The Post and other news organizations based on information released by the military. The Defense Department's official casualty number, however, generally lags -- it stood yesterday at 1,993 -- because it includes only troops who have been officially identified and whose families have been notified. Pentagon figures show that more than 15,000 have been wounded.

The U.S. military has provided no comprehensive estimate of deaths among Iraqis -- either insurgents or non-combatants. Based on fragmented reports, the number of enemy Iraqi fighters killed appears to be several times greater than the U.S. fatalities, while independent estimates of the number of dead Iraqi civilians range from 20,000 to 30,000.

As in any war, the worst toll in Iraq has been borne by young, male ground troops: Three-quarters of the dead are active-duty soldiers and Marines, the bulk of them in their twenties.