Death In Iraq Touches Entire Town

Small military towns, where families and friends support each other in the worst of times, rarely open up to outsiders. One, however, did for CBS News Correspondent David Martin, who begins a two-part report.

Fort Irwin, Calif. is a small town of about 5,000 people made even smaller by its isolation in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Laurel Frank starts this day by laying on a breakfast spread for her guests.

But this is a house in mourning. A roadside bomb in Iraq killed Frank's husband, Capt. Stephen Frank. Now, alone with their 2-year-old son, she is broken-hearted beyond words.

This is not just any small town. This is the home of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment and almost every household here has a soldier serving in Iraq. When death comes to this small town it touches everyone who lives here.

The bomb that killed Stephen Frank also took the life of Capt. Jay Harting, whose family lives just around the corner and down the street from Laurel Frank.

Jennifer Harting is left with three small children. The baby, Warren, was born two weeks premature.

"In order to fly to West Point to bury my husband they had to induce labor so I could have the baby with me on the flight instead of being pregnant," she says.

She remembers being surprisingly calm when she learned her husband was dead. Not so when she found out about Stephen Frank. They had been classmates at West Point.

"I think that was my first moment of rage," she says. "I just thought, 'How could this have happened? Why, why two commanders?'"

A friend drove her down to the street to Laurel Frank's.

"And we just looked at each other and thought, 'Oh, we're going to have a bond for the rest of our lives because of that,'" says Jennifer Harting.

It's been a little more than a month now, and it doesn't get any easier.

"I could be 95 and it still wouldn't be any easier," says Laurel Frank.

There are 2,200 soldiers from the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in Iraq. Eight are now dead and the wives of the unit's commanders know only too well, it's still early in the one-year tour of duty.

Everyday they wonder what will happen if they keep losing like this.

"I think why there's such a sense of anxiety and dread now is because it's been eight in eight weeks," says another commander's wife, Kay Wenzel. "So you just think, 'OK, every week are we going to lose another?'"