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"We immediately requested to go to Fort Bragg to see our son," Bob Pesta said. "We were refused.""I just wanted to hold his hand," Joan Pesta said. "I just wanted to say goodbye. They said we could not come and if we did, we'd be arrested."
It was at that moment -- when an Army functionary refused permission for the grieving parents to rush to to the side of their dead son -- that everything turned dark and sour at the Pesta house. The Army's explanation to the Pestas that there were no visiting facilities at the base morgue was not good enough for a family deep in shock and grief.
"There were too many questions and too few answers," Bob Pesta said. "No one one knew what anybody else was doing. They left us telephone numbers that didn't work or were connected to fax machines. Answering machines were full. It was a weekend and nobody would call us back."
And all because he died in the wrong country.
Ours.