Lori McCoy and Edwin Rossman Jr.

Lori McCoy and Edwin Rossman Jr.

ON that November day in 2006, when First Sgt. Edwin Rossman Jr., formerly of HellRaiser Platoon, stood up at the funeral of Staff Sgt. Greg McCoy, his role in the lives of the wife and two young boys left behind by his fallen Iraq War comrade was respectful and narrowly defined.

As the immediate superior and friend of Sergeant McCoy, killed in Baghdad by shrapnel from an improvised explosive device, Sergeant Rossman had been asked by Sergeant McCoy’s widow, Lori McCoy, to read the soldier’s Army service record to those who had assembled at Fort Hood, Tex., for the solemn event.

“Lori asked me to speak because she knew Greg, who was my best friend and a man I could count on during the Iraq War, would have wanted me to,” said the twice-divorced Sergeant Rossman.

Ms. McCoy had met Sergeant Rossman in 2002 in Germany, and recalled being delighted that he had agreed to speak. But their interaction was limited to small talk and condolences.

In addition to being devastated over her husband’s death, Ms. McCoy was busy moving Logan, then 6, and his 3-year-old brother, Tyler, into her parents’ home in Waco, Tex., all while preparing herself to start college.

“I never thought of Ed as attractive or anything more than my husband’s boss,” said Ms. McCoy, 31, who remembered being stationed with her husband in Germany and having had occasion to interact with Sergeant Rossman through a support group she came to lead that sought to help war wives and their children.

“Ed seemed scary to me at first,” she said, recalling how she would overhear Sergeant Rossman loudly yelling at soldiers. “But after we were introduced, he was nice and eager to help me learn the job.”

After the funeral she found that her questions weren’t being answered by the casualty assistance officer assigned to her case. Remembering the generosity Sergeant Rossman had shown her family in Germany, Ms. McCoy — whom her mother, Gena Smith, calls “a free spirit” and a “spur of the moment” sort — began a regular series of telephone conversations with him.

At the time, Sergeant Rossman, now 46, was dealing with his own problems. In 2004, he was injured in a mortar attack on his armored Humvee during a battle in Baghdad with 500 insurgents — which he described as being like a July 4th barrage, but “with bullets hitting vehicles like hail.”

In the destruction, he knocked his head hard on his vehicle’s metal radio mount. “I thought it was whiplash,” he said, but later learned he had damaged a disk in his neck. “There was a lot of pain, but I survived. Not everyone did.” He endured a string of operations, one before relocating to Colorado in 2005, and six more afterward. Gradually, every disk in his neck was replaced with metal.

There was also the matter of the collapse of his second marriage. By the time of Sergeant McCoy’s funeral, Sergeant Rossman had finalized divorce No. 2.

Nevertheless, he was happy to help Ms. McCoy in this transition from Army wife to Army widow. He fondly recalled the exchanges they had had back in Germany, and how he had been impressed with the skill Ms. McCoy had shown in dealing with other military families. “She was a levelheaded person who treated others with respect even when they didn’t treat her that way,” he said.

With the approach of spring in 2007, Sergeant Rossman — emboldened by the close relationship he and Ms. McCoy had developed over the phone, and by a brief kiss in a meeting at her parents’ home in Waco that February —decided to act on his romantic inclinations. He asked her if he could visit her the following month in Waco.

The feeling was mutual. “I noticed his pretty blue eyes, his good build,” Ms. McCoy said. “In the earlier months when I cried over Greg and complained about how unfair it was that my boys didn’t have their daddy, Ed was comforting and supportive.”

That March visit was a whirlwind of talking, joking, going to movies and taking the boys to family restaurants.

Soon they were making more treks back and forth between Texas and Colorado Springs, where he had bought a large house..... Read More ...

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