Cpl. Kemephoon Chanawongse, U.S.M.C (KIA)

(reprinted from the Hartford Courant April 18, 2003)

Gone, With Honor

WATERFORD -- Tan Patchem woke her husband early last Sunday. Several missing Marines had been found alive in Iraq. Her son, she hoped, was among them.

She learned later that Cpl. Kemaphoom "Ahn" Chanawongse was not in the group. By Monday morning, all of the missing Marines from his unit had been confirmed dead - all except Ahn.

She was making dinner on Tuesday when a Navy chaplain and two Marines appeared at her door - the same men who had come three weeks earlier to report her son missing. Before they said a word, she knew. The images she had held on to - Chanawongse hiding in an abandoned building or recovering under the watch of a sympathetic Iraqi - were wrong. Her son's remains had been identified.

"I think that the whole time I have hope, I know there's a chance he might not be coming back, too," she said Wednesday. "It's like I prepare myself for the worst."

Chanawongse became missing on March 23, after his amphibious assault vehicle was ambushed near Nasiriyah as the unit tried to take control of a bridge over the Euphrates River. A week later, three of eight Marines missing from his unit were confirmed dead.

As the weeks rolled by and her son's status remained unchanged, Tan Patchem's hope grew. Each morning, she flipped on the news for an update on the war. Then, she and her husband, Paul, knelt on cushions in their family room by a statue of Buddha and prayed. Before bed each night, they prayed again. They filled the hours in between looking at photographs and old letters and reading the hundreds of notes that have poured in, expressing support for the man known to his fellow Marines as "Chuckles."

On Wednesday, a steady stream of friends and family filled the house.

Steve Cavan arrived in his car, decorated with yellow ribbons. He pointed to a recent photo of Chanawongse, taped to the dashboard, next to the speedometer. It showed Ahn, grinning wildly, after a night out with his friends.

"We were just living our lives out as kids," he said. "That's how I'll always remember him."

On Wednesday, Tan and Paul Patchem met with Marine Corps officials to make funeral arrangements. The Marines will fly Chanawongse's grandfather and his brother from Thailand to Waterford. For three days, Buddhist monks will chant prayers for Chanawongse. His cremated remains will then be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

"It is a place for all the brave soldiers," she said. "He is one of them."

Waterford First Selectman Paul Eccard said the town will hold a memorial service after the burial.

"Now that we know the news is what we desperately hoped it would not be, we will do everything we can to support the family," he said.

Gov. John G. Rowland requested that flags in the state fly at half-staff until after Chanawongse's memorial service.

On April 6, a Sunday, Tan Patchem drove with her niece to Boston to celebrate the Thai New Year at a Buddhist temple, Wat Nawamintararachutis. She brought a large portrait of her son in military dress, which was posted prominently, as the monks chanted a special prayer for Chanawongse's return.

"It meant a lot to me," she said on Monday. "It's the way we do it in Thailand."

In his last letter home, Chanawongse described the boredom of waiting for the war to begin. He told his parents how he and the other Marines had improvised a game of baseball from a ball of rags and a stick. He complained about the desert dust and how, minutes after taking a shower, he was dirty again. To pass the time, he painted the word "sandstorm" across the side of his amphibious tractor, which the Marines call an Amtrak.

Friends remember Chanawongse as an easygoing kid with a bright smile: the "Thai-import with the baby face," as he called himself on his website. A prank that seemed innocuous at the time - bringing a plastic gun to school - landed him a year suspension in ninth grade. The punishment seemed harsh, but Chanawongse was not one to hold a grudge.

"He never got mad at no one," his mother said. "He never complained."

Tan Patchem was surprised when her son enlisted in the Marines in 1999, days after graduating from Waterford High School. He had an artistic side and was proficient in photography, drawing cartoons and making elaborate stickers out of vinyl. One sticker, a black prisoner of war/missing in action emblem, was so skillfully done that a Vietnam veteran noticed it on Tan's bumper and asked where he could get one. She asked her son to make a second sticker for the veteran, and he did.

In hindsight, she now recognizes the makings of a Marine. With his first paycheck, Chanawongse bought a sword. Later, an archer's bow. He strung together plastic milk cartons and hung them in the yard to use for target practice. He often packed his dogs, Mo and Snoop, into a canoe and floated down the creek that runs along the back of his house into Long Island Sound.

"Why the Marines?" she asked him.

"The Marines are the best," he told her.

She reminded him of the training, challenges and danger he would face. But he knew what he wanted and his friends secretly envied him.

"I never thought he'd have the courage to go," said a longtime friend, Troy Bergeson. "But when he came back from boot camp, it's like he grew up overnight. He was built. He was a lot stronger looking. He was real proud of himself and what he was doing."

He was also following a family tradition. His grandfather was a high-ranking officer in the Thai air force, and his uncle, also Thai, was a decorated pilot. His stepfather, Paul Patchem, is a former Navy electrician.

His family noticed the change when he became a Marine. "He had a mission," a relative, Kim Atkinson, said Wednesday. "He had found himself."

The Thai press watched Tan Patchem's wait for her son to come home closely, dubbing her the "Iron Mom." Chanawongse moved to the U.S. when he was 9 and has extended family in Thailand. His older brother, Awe, 24, has been studying business there for the last year.

When news first hit that Chanawongse was missing, a line of reporters filed into the Patchems' house. The spotlight waned as the weeks passed. But on Monday, the reporters returned, and it wasn't hard to read between the lines. The military had more remains that had yet to be identified.

Even as the odds that Chanawongse might be recovered alive grew more improbable, Tan Patchem remained hopeful. She took solace in an image that played around the world last week: the statue of Saddam Hussein tumbling to the ground. "It is very good when we see Saddam's statue come down by his own people," she said. "That means what we are doing is the right thing."

"He had a short life, but he was happy, and he made the best out of that and he died with honor and make everybody proud," she said. "Even though he passed away, he passed away as a hero."