AN UP-CLOSE ACCOUNT OF A MOTHER WHO GETS THE DREADED KNOCK ON THE DOOR.

Adele Allen has had years to grow accustomed to the worries that come with being a military mother.

Her son, Sgt. Tracy Louis Allen, 37, joined the Army just out of high school nearly 20 years ago. Since then, he has found adventure waiting at every turn, fighting in the first Gulf War and serving a six-month peacekeeping mission in war-torn Kosovo.

Mrs. Allen knows all too well stories of the dreaded knock at the door by a uniformed officer, so when her Saturday afternoon nap was interrupted by a knock at the door a million thoughts ran through her mind. Her fear grew when she peeped around her curtain to see a nervous looking Sumter police officer on the front porch of her Oakland Avenue home.

“He was standing there looking rather awkward,” she said. “Of course it couldn’t have been easy for him.”

The news, that Sgt. Allen was wounded in a grenade attack late Friday as his convoy made its way through a neighborhood northeast of Baghdad, was unbelievable. The police officer gave her the number of an officer with the U.S. Casualty Office, who gave her specific information on her son’s injuries.

Mrs. Allen sounds like a very special woman. Read her entire story here.