The siblings of fallen soldiers expressed that they require further government support, similar to what widows or parents receive.
Siblings of fallen soldiers told a Thursday Knesset IDF Human Resources Subcommittee panel that they lacked government support amid a sharp rise in bereaved families since the start of the Israel-Hamas War.
Arie Moalem, the head of the Defense Ministry’s Families, Commemoration, and Heritage Department, discussed the impact that the war has had and the spike in bereaved family members in the country since.
“The last two years of the war are like 26 years of work and 26 years of funerals,” he said.
“We have added more than 6,500 people to the circle of bereavement. We reached a peak of 90 funerals in a single day.”
The meeting was led by MK Elazar Stern (Yesh Atid), where bereaved family members spoke about various issues they have struggled with since the loss of their loved ones.
Bereaved families, friends and Israeli soldiers visit the graves of fallen soldier during Memorial Day which commemorates the fallen Israeli soldiers and victims of terror at Mount Herzl Military Cemetery in Jerusalem on April 30, 2025. (credit: Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)
Numerous siblings of fallen soldiers spoke on the complex situations they have found themselves in, expressing that they require further government support, similar to what widows or parents receive.
A sister who lost her brother in combat told those at the committee that siblings often fill in for their grieving parents, while still mourning the loss of their brother or sister themselves.
Speaking as a new olah to the country, the bereaved sister said that when her brother died, she was the one who had to translate for her mother as to whether his body was recognizable or not.
Bereaved siblings also need to take care of parents
She said that as a bereaved sibling, “we have no address to turn to,” noting that many who lose a brother or a sister in combat are often young, working, or students. They then find themselves having to help care for their grieving parents while receiving little government help in the process.
“I had to take care of my parents, but I would still need to go to work and study,” she told the panel, adding that “there is no government body to represent me as a bereaved sister.”
“We need such a body to represent us and push legislation for us,” she continued, calling on MKs to find a solution.
Another bereaved sibling lost his brother in combat, whom, he said, he was very close to. He told the committee about the challenge of navigating the needs of his parents while also grieving the loss of his brother and losing his job.
When his parents were grieving, he “was the one who had to run between [his] mother and father,” the bereaved brother told the committee.
The brother said that other than psychological help, no financial support was offered to him, and criticized that such aid was provided to parents or widows, but not to siblings.
“There was no government body to look out for me,” he said, “I would need to go to work every day and just cry there.”
Capt. Derward Blake Harper, killed in World War II and buried at Oakwood Cemetery in Raleigh
Robin Simonton
RALEIGH
Near the end of World War II, a bomber pilot from Raleigh hit a patch of stormy weather and crashed his B-25 into the side of a Chinese mountain, dying at 26 along with his crew.
For more than a year, Capt. Derward Harper lay under a wooden cross in Yunnan Province — 7,000 miles from home.
Then, once the war had ended, the Army sent Harper’s family a letter: he’d been disinterred and reburied near his base, “with fitting dignity and solemnity.” Two years later, the family got another letter: he’d been moved again — this time to Hawaii.
Finally, after five years and a tall pile of government mail, Harper’s casket reached Raleigh, where his wife had remarried and his mother grown old.
And they held his fourth funeral.
“I don’t know if people can understand this process,” said Robin Simonton, executive director of Oakwood Cemetery, where Harper now rests. “I see loss every day, but I’ve never been here during a war. It’s loss and logistics.”
Derward Harper’s grave in Oakwood Cemetery in Raleigh Josh Shaffer
Raleigh’s 100th Memorial Day
This month marks the 100th anniversary of Raleigh’s first Memorial Day, a ceremony it was slow to embrace. One ugly reality shaped the city’s decision to join the national observance: huge numbers of soldiers getting shipped home from World War I in caskets.
Not only did Raleigh find itself burying men in their 20s, it struggled to retrieve those soldiers from the battlefields in France, blown apart by artillery shells or ravaged by Spanish flu, hastily buried in makeshift graves with their unfortunate comrades.
In their new book “Bringing Them Home,” Simonton and Raleigh historian Bruce Miller trace the path of dozens killed in Gettysburg, in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, along the Hindenburg Line in World War I, in Germany or Japan and all the way to Quan Nam in Vietnam — each of them painstakingly delivered to Oakwood.
“It’s a process that’s seldom understood,” said Miller. “We’ve heard people say, ‘He died in Korea and was buried in Anytown, USA.’ The middle part is gone. It’s lost, and it’s as if it were magic.”
Derward Blake Harper, killed when his B-25 crashed in China, took five years to return for burial in Raleigh Robin Simonton
In their book, Simonton and Miller try to both elevate the dead and demystify the words on their memorials: Killed in China; or Died in Rangoon, Burma; or Bon Voyage, Tom.
Here are a few of the stories they found in the world’s archives, charting Raleigh fighters.
Graham Bailey: Whereabouts unknown
Born into a rough life, Bailey lost his mother as a boy then saw his father declared insane, confined to a mental institution where he died of auto-intoxication. At the time, neither Bailey nor his brother knew their grandparents names.
This string of misfortune led to Bailey joining the NC National Guard, then shipping out to the Western Front in 1918 as an Army corporal. By May of that year, he found himself in no-man’s-land near Ypres in Belgium, joining raids and taking German prisoners.
Graham Thomas Bailey, an Army corporal from Raleigh killed during World War I. His gravesite is unknown. Robin Simonton
During one September assault, the deadliest day for North Carolina troops, a single German shell killed four American soldiers, including Bailey. Soon his sister asked for the body, by then buried in a French cemetery, to be shipped back to their home on Harp Street.
But Bailey’s whereabouts, lost in a tangle of paperwork, never surfaced. By 1921, the government learned that the soldier in the grave marked with Bailey’s name was actually Pvt. Martin Taylor. Somebody else wearing Bailey’s dog tags ended up in a third grave nearby.
So the government asked the sister for dental records, and whether her brother carried any scars or fractured bones, none of which she knew for sure. The inquiry continued for eight years and only further described the carnage behind his death.
More than a century later, no one can say where Bailey rests.
Bobby Crocker: ‘Slight mishap’ turns fatal
On the day Bobby Crocker went to war, he was still only 18, a star fullback at Raleigh High School — a player so dominant that in his final game he ran for two touchdowns and passed in a third.
But the day Crocker left Raleigh — Oct. 2, 1943 — he couldn’t suit up to play. Drafted into the Marines, his train left at halftime.
So he watched his teammates play the game they dedicated to him, then at halftime walked from the field to his train at Seaboard Station. The platform stood so close that fans could watch him all the way.
“If the stocky youngster fights as hard as a Marine as he played football,” The News & Observer raved, “he will continue to make headlines.”
Bobby Crocker was a star football player at Raleigh High School, now known as Broughton High School, before getting drafted into World War II. He left during halftime of his team’s game against Wilson with the fans standing in silence. He didn’t return. Courtesy of Susan Crocker
But Crocker never saw action, and he never lived the heroic story his hometown predicted.
On a stopover at Eniwetok atoll in the Pacific, he was cleaning latrines when his supervisor showed off his .45-caliber pistol, which accidentally fired and sent a bullet through Crocker’s chest.
In a letter home, Crocker described his injury as a “slight mishap” and asked if his brother Bill was still fooling with the girls. “I notice in the last picture from him, he was sporting a new zoot suit,” wrote the teen. “Is Betty still as pretty as she was when I left? … I believe if we can get rid of Germany in the next few months, I will probably be eating turkey with you next Christmas.”
But Crocker would later die from the injury.
It took till 1947 to get him home. He’d been buried twice before.
Memorial Day tours at Oakwood
Oakwood Cemetery will hold Memorial Day tours with a costumed guide and history tent from noon to 3 p.m. on May 27.
Sign up here or at: https://historicoakwoodcemetery.org/event/observe-memorial-day-at-oakwood-family-tours-and-history-tent/
‘Bringing Them Home’ book
These and many dozens of other stories make up “Bringing Them Home,” which can be purchased here or at:
Josh Shaffer is a general assignment reporter on the watch for “talkers,” which are stories you might discuss around a water cooler. He has worked for The News & Observer since 2004 and writes a column about unusual people and places.
