Second in a series
Re “When Your Son Is Killed Far Away, How Do You React?”
[img]2642|right|Mario Ferrara||no_popup[/img]Dateline Torrance – Finding even slight comfort after your son is killed in war was uncharted territory for Mario and Linda Ferrara when their son Matt was killed in 2007.
Searching online in those days for accessible pockets of comfort, Mr. Ferrara recalled encountering the young widow of a soldier killed around the time of Matt’s death.
A Medal of Honor winner, Ryan Pitts, was with the woman’s husband when he was killed in an Afghanistant firefight. He spoke lengthily in an interview about the brave young soldier.
“Whenever we hear someone speaking or writing about our child,” Mr. Ferrara said, “it lights us up. I wanted her to know we knew exactly what she was thinking when…”
The widow attended a barbecue last weekend hosted by the Ferraras. Invited guests were families who have lost loved ones in war and also to honor Mike Viti (www.mikeshikingforheroes.com and Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/Mikeshikingforheroes/timeline) who is hiking across country, 7,100 kilometers, to remind Americans of the 7,100 victims of terrorism.
More, Tell Us More
Mr. Ferrara’s instinctive reaction when he learned of Matt’s death was to find out what people, what the government what any friends were saying about him.
Did he accumulate enough information to mollify his and his wife Linda’s hungry emotions?
He paused. The answer was not so tidy.
“We started out with a good mindset because of our philosophy,” he said.
Which is?
“Doris Day said it (in her mid-1950s hit), Que Sera Sera, Whatever Will Be Will Be.”
It wasn’t quite that seamless, though.
The bereaved father admitted that “I had that anger about the Taliban, and from what I understood, a betrayal at the time by the people running the little village where my son was. We got information right away from his higher-ups, Matt’s officers, his company commander and battalion commander.”
What was the betrayal of Matt Ferrara?
The Final Fight
“It’s an involved story,” Mr. Ferrara said. “Matt was in the village, trying to interdict trafficking in a trail that came from Pakistan. He was there to keep the insurgents out of the village if he could.
“It turned out the village was the insurgents. They attacked him. That was not his first fight.
“In his first fight he and his men fended off about a hundred Taliban who attacked his base. Matt and his men were outnumbered 5 to 1.
“The (fatal) attack occurred early morning. Unannounced, obviously. After four hours, there were 10 dead Taliban on the field. One was a commander, whose father was mayor of the village.
“None of our guys got killed,” Mr. Ferrara said. “The command decided it was not a good idea to stay there after this happened. They retreated to another base, and they burned down the structure they had put up there.
“They took up residence at another base that was a four-hour walk away.”
(To be continued)
