KPLU Local News
(2010-07-22)
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Victoria Walz Holds A Picture Her Son Ian Made When He Was A Little Boy
Photo by Austin Jenkins
Full Story
This was the scene on a recent evening at Lewis-McChord Army base. A plane-load of 5th Stryker Brigade soldiers is arriving home. Families and friends pack a gymnasium. Welcome home signs hang from the rafters. A video feed shows the soldiers stepping off the plane at a nearby airfield. Among them: Jenny Warren's son Jesse, a medic with the 5th Brigade.
Jenny Warren: "I am so excited."
As Warren anxiously waits, she says this is the end to a year of constant worry.
Jenny Warren: "When they said he was going to Afghanistan, my heart was so heavy. And I prayed for him a lot."
Warren knows she's one of the fortunate ones - her son is coming home alive.
Jenny Warren: "Sometimes I want to cry because I know that there's a mother, a sister, a wife that is hurting. But I'm thankful that God has brought these guys back safe."
One soldier who didn't come home alive is Christopher Ian Walz - age 25. His mother Victoria sits in dark, sparsely furnished apartment in Vancouver, Washington. She recalls the day last October when she found out her son was dead.
Victoria Walz: "And I lived in a two-story building and Donna, my sister, yelled up: Vicki, Ian is gone.' Those words are still planted in my head."
Ian died with six of his fellow soldiers and an Afghan interpreter in what would be the single deadliest attack of the deployment.
This is the first time Walz has given an interview about the death of her only child. She says the first six months were so painful she wanted to die too. Walz takes me to a back bedroom in her apartment.
Victoria Walz: "This is his room. Those are his flowers that were at his memorial, I still have them."
And there are two padlocked trunks the Army sent her.
Victoria Walz: "And I can't open them yet. I mean I open them and then I have to close them because his clothes are in there and that makes it too real because you know he touched those and wore them."
Christopher Ian Walz is one of 37 members of the 5th Stryker Brigade who died over the past year. The Brigade's deployment coincided with one of the deadliest periods for U-S forces in Afghanistan. Soon after the soldiers put boots on the ground last summer, the casualties began to mount. Nine in August, seven in September and ten in October. The troops suffered morale problems. In January, the Army Times published a story headlined: "Stryker soldiers say commanders failed them." Then, scandal: five soldiers were charged with murdering Afghan civilians.
Sitting in her living room in Vancouver, Victoria Walz doesn't dwell on the controversies. What matters to her is that her son felt he was doing something worthwhile in Afghanistan.
Victoria Walz: "I can't judge what's going on there because I don't have a clue. I can't be angry. I can just be sad. Just be sad."
Then Walz - who's a nurse - reveals something profoundly personal. She says there were two things she needed to know after her son was killed. First, that he didn't suffer. So she requested his autopsy report and was reassured he didn't. The second thing Walz needed to know was that all of her son's remains made it back from Afghanistan - even if he wasn't intact because of the bomb blast. And so in the funeral home, she opened his casket.
Victoria Walz: "He was wrapped. And so I felt him, you know, like I knew that his left upper area was gone, you know I could feel that and I knew his arm was detached on this side and something was wrong with his lower left leg."
Later she had Ian cremated and buried at Arlington.
[Guitar music]
Back in the gymnasium at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, the moment the families have been waiting for has arrived. A curtain lifts to reveal the returning soldiers standing in formation.
[Crowd sounds]
As families frantically search for their soldier, Jenny Warren finds her son. And locks him in a hug.
Jenny Warren: "Oh, I'm so glad you're home safe."
It's a moment Victoria Walz won't get to have. After my interview, she sent me an email about raising Ian as a single mom. It said: "I am honored to have been his mother. He taught me the most important thing in my life LOVE" - which she wrote in capital letters. Even though it will be painful, Walz plans to attend the official welcome home ceremony for her son's Brigade. I'm Austin Jenkins reporting.
Thursday's welcome home ceremony begins at 10am at Watkins Field at Lewis-Mcchord.
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