FREDERICK, Md. — Whether at home or abroad, military personnel and their families face a strain during the holiday season.

For some, there is the joy of a loved one returning just in time to spend the holidays with their loved ones. Others, however, must live with the fear of knowing their special person could be in harm’s way.

“It’s a time when most people think about gathering with family and sharing in the holiday season,” said Col. William Sean Lee, state chaplain for the Maryland National Guard. “Because of the separation with the deployment, they can’t do that. That’s part of the quiet sacrifice of the military families. They’ll never get that time back — ever.”

There was nothing greater for the Revesz family than the return home of their son, brother and friend — Army Sgt. Brent Patterson.

Patterson just wrapped up a 12-month tour in Afghanistan. Before that, he spent 15 months in Iraq. The three-time recipient of the Purple Heart has not been home for the holidays in three years.

“It got to the point where it didn’t feel like a holiday,” Patterson, 23, said from his family’s Frederick home this week. “It was another day just trying to stay alive.”

Being holed up in bunkers, worrying about the next attack, eating MREs — that’s how Patterson spent his days.

“They would fight in the snow,” Patterson said of the enemy. “They wouldn’t take a break. They’d keep going.”

The whole family was gathered at his family’s Stonehouse Road home this week. A giant welcome home banner adorned the front porch. He’ll be home until Jan. 2.

Family meals have been planned throughout the next week to try and spend as much time as possible with Patterson.

“I am so relieved to have him home,” said his mother, Kathy Revesz. “Now our family is complete again.”

For the holidays, there was no greater gift.

“That’s the present right there,” Revesz said, pointing to her son. “I can sleep at night.”

Every night the phone was at her side, ready for a call that might come. Revesz said she didn’t want to miss a call from her son, fearing it could be her last.

She got her son home safely, Revesz said, but there are still many others deployed.

“It still makes me cry to know there are people in harm’s way,” she said.

Patterson’s younger sister, Shelly Revesz, is a sophomore at Gov. Thomas Johnson High School.

“I love it,” she said of his return home. “I missed him so much. ... I can’t describe it. It’s just awesome.”

Patterson still has eight months left, but it should be spent at Fort Polk, La. Part of the time will be recuperating from surgery to remove shrapnel from his shoulder.

“I don’t have to go back again. I’m happy about that,” Patterson said. “Where we were at, it was a war every single day.”

On the US military’s last plane out of Iraq Saturday night, troops on board are in a festive, if slightly skeptical mood.

The Air Force crew manning the C-17 cargo plane has been told on previous missions that theirs will be the final flight out of the country in which America waged war for 8-1/2 years.

“They’ve said it was the last flight to us three or four times,” says Staff Sgt. Kristi Benton, reading a Dean Koonz novel.

But these had been false alarms, due to routine logistical swaps and tweaks.

Presently, however, the Air Force’s top noncommissioned officer in Iraq, Command Chief Master Sgt. Mike Hanning, boards the plane.

“I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time,” he says, settling into a jump seat.

As a pair of two-star generals appear as well – the highest-ranking Air Force commanders in Iraq – the crew begins to believe it: They will be the last airmen on the last American military flight of this war.

Maj. Gen. Anthony Rock, in charge of the Air Force’s training mission in Iraq, climbed to the cockpit to tell the captains the news. “They didn’t know,” he says.

When he informed them of this news, he adds, “They didn’t believe it.”

For General Rock and his longtime friend Maj. Gen. Russell Handy – the Air Force’s top officer in Iraq – the flight is both somewhat surreal and professionally profound.

It marks a poignant final chapter in a conflict that has spanned more than two decades of their careers.

As young captains in 1990, Rock and General Handy were in fighter squadrons in Langley, Va., with the mission of bombing this air base during the first Gulf war.

Handy, for his part, recalls the “pesky SAM or two” – surface-to-air missiles – that Iraq “had in this area literally for years.”

Adds Rock, “We were sure Saddam’s forces were coming.”

In their most recent assignments, Handy and Rock have instead been shepherding the Iraqi Air Force, training them to defend their country from external threats – and to safely land aircraft. (After the last US airmen climbed out of the air-traffic-control tower and on to the awaiting C-17 Saturday night, it will be an Iraqi air-traffic controller who will guide the US plane for its takeoff.)

“It’s a 21 year story,” says Handy, “all culminating in this operation.”

Before the troops begin boarding the flight, Handy urges them all to take a moment and soak in the momentous occasion – the rare and welcome chance to witness a war’s end.

“What I encourage you to do is look around,” he says. Think back “on the hundreds of thousands who have come before you. They’ve been counting on us to bring this thing to an effective close – to a proud close,” he adds.

“Just reflect a little bit on that.”

ARLINGTON, Va. — Thousands of grave markers at Arlington National Cemetery may need to be replaced or added to accurately account for the dead, following a meticulous Army review of each of the nearly 260,000 headstones and niche covers on the grounds.

In a report to Congress on Thursday, the Army found potential discrepancies between headstones and cemetery paperwork on about 64,000 grave markers — about one in four.

Congress ordered the review last year following reports of misidentified and misplaced graves that led to the ouster of the cemetery's top executives.
The report found no further evidence of misplaced graves, though it cautioned that its review is not complete and that some errors could have gone undetected.

There are potentially thousands of minor errors, including misspelled names, or incorrect military ranks and dates of birth and death.

The Army compared information on every headstone to its internal records, scouring handwritten logs of the dead from the Civil War and a hodgepodge of other records to verify accuracy.

In an interview, the cemetery's executive director, Kathryn Condon, said reviews are ongoing and it's premature to try to estimate exactly how many headstones may need replacement.

To be sure, many of the 64,000 discrepancies will turn up no problem with a headstone — it may be as simple as a typo on an internal record. And in many cases, the discrepancies are not errors at all but reflect past practices at the cemetery that are now considered outdated.

One of the biggest surprises uncovered by the review was that in most of the early 20th century, the cemetery did not include the name of a wife on a headstone when she was buried next to her husband. Under current practices, the name of the spouse is etched onto the back of the headstone.

Condon said the cemetery will correct that by adding the spouse's name to the gravesite. She said it is not only the right thing to do but is also required by law.
Accounting for the forgotten spouses alone will require thousands of corrections, officials said. In some cases, replacement headstones will be made. In cases where the headstones are considered historic, footstones will be added.

The Army and a team of 70 analysts are undertaking painstaking reviews of every case where they find a potential discrepancy to ensure that records are made accurate. Those reviews are expected to be completed in the summer.

The process began with a hand count, using simple mechanical clickers, of every gravesite — 259,978 to be exact. (More than 300,000 people are buried at Arlington, but some grave markers have two or more names.) Then, during the summer, members of the Army's ceremonial Old Guard unit used iPhones to photograph the front and back of every headstone, so the information could be compared against internal records.

Officials cited Christian Keiner, a Civil War veteran from New York who died in 1919, as a typical example. The headstone reflected only his name, but internal records showed that his wife, Caroline Keiner, had also been buried there in 1915. In addition, the internal records spelled Caroline Keiner's name as "Kiner." Officials reviewed handwritten Census records from 1900 and Civil war-era military and pension records to confirm that "Keiner" was indeed the correct spelling.

McLEAN, Va. — Management of Arlington National Cemetery has improved significantly in the last year since the cemetery’s top two officials were forced out amid reports of misidentified graves, and it may no longer make sense to strip the Army of its management of the cemetery, according to a government report released Thursday.

The Government Accountability Office, the watchdog arm of Congress, issued two reports detailing the reforms that have been put in place by the new leadership team of Executive Director Kathryn Condon and Superintendent Patrick Hallinan. The two took over following allegations of widespread mismanagement under the previous executives, Superintendent John Metzler and deputy Thurman Higginbotham.

The GAO was specifically asked to evaluate whether Congress should remove the cemetery from Army management and hand it over to the Department of Veterans Affairs, which already manages 82 of the nation’s 84 military cemeteries.

While the GAO concluded a transfer could be feasible, the report stated that “given the improvements the Army has made and continues to make at Arlington, it may be premature to transfer jurisdiction.” The GAO noted that the Army has found ways to collaborate and share ideas with the VA, and recommended increased collaboration in the future.

Still, the report found issues needing attention. It noted that cemetery staff has increased from 102 to 142, following recommendations that staffing at the cemetery should be at 159. But the cemetery now estimates it needs 201 employees to carry out its duties. The report recommended a formal analysis of the cemetery’s manpower needs.

The report also found fault with some of the fact-checking methodology the cemetery has used to ensure worried families that their loved ones have indeed been properly buried. In the wake of the heavily publicized reports of misplaced graves, the cemetery established a hotline that families could call. The GAO reported that the cemetery fielded about 1,200 calls seeking verification that burials occurred properly.

The cemetery determined that everything was in order in nearly 98 percent of those cases. But GAO double-checked 60 of those reviews and in a few of those cases found problems or potential problems had been overlooked. In one case, for instance, the cemetery’s review overlooked the fact that a headstone had a wrong middle initial.

The GAO issued a separate report reviewing management of $35 million in contracts awarded related to Arlington, 60 percent of which cover groundskeeping and custodial duties. The report made a variety of procedural recommendations.

In response to the report, Condon wrote a letter to the GAO saying the Defense Department either agrees or partially agrees with all of GAO’s specific recommendations.

The cemetery responded to the report Thursday with a statement: “Arlington National Cemetery continues to make progress in all aspects of the cemetery’s performance, accountability and modernization. We welcome the U.S. Government Accountability Office’s recommendations as we continue to improve and enhance our organization.”