OSWEGO, N.Y. — The three young sons of Staff Sgt. Carletta Davis did not get to say goodbye to her before she shipped off to Iraq in September. Two months later, Carletta was killed by a roadside bomb as her convoy returned from a mission near Kirkuk on Nov. 5.
"Those boys didn't get that last hug and kiss, and that's what they'll crave the rest of their lives," said Lavada Napier, Carletta's mother.
The day Carletta Davis died, the Pentagon reported that the number of American troops killed in Iraq set an unwelcome record as the worst year yet, topping the 849 deaths in 2004. The total so far this year stands at 894.
The record came even though the number of military deaths in Iraq has dropped every month since August, down to 37 in November. But 2007 began badly, with 83 deaths in January and more than 100 deaths per month in April, May and June.
For the Davis family -- forever on the move, never quite settled and never really home -- the death of Carletta was a particularly devastating blow. Three boys in a strange town have lost a loving mother who was gone for much of their lives. A father who had kept his family together while pursuing a medical career is left to raise his sons in a town where he has few friends.
"She's been gone three-quarters of the time the last few years," said Thomas Davis, Carletta's husband. "I wonder if it's really sinking in that this time she's not coming back."
Thomas and sons Treyton, 14; Theodore, 13; and Tyrique, 8, moved to Oswego because it's near Ft. Drum, the base for Carletta's unit. Thomas Davis, 35, took a job at an Oswego hospital in September and planned to settle down. His wife was to rejoin them in December 2008.
Carletta, 34, served in Korea, Iraq and Texas. The Iraq deployment was her third in the country. Because of her Army career and Thomas' training as a physician's assistant, the boys enrolled here in their third school in the last year.
Last month, the family flew across the country for a memorial service in Alaska, where Carletta grew up. In July, instead of a planned family vacation in Hawaii for Carletta's home leave, Thomas and his sons will bury her in Fairbanks, Alaska, when the summer sun finally melts the frozen earth.
"I read about the deaths in Iraq every day, but it seems like just names and numbers," Thomas said. "When it happens to you, it's personal.
"Everybody's sympathetic and offers to help, but I don't know what to tell them," he said. "I don't know what I need."
