On Saturday the U.S. Army released the name of the second pilot—reported to have been pilot in command—of the Blackhawk helicopter that collided with American Airlines flight 5342 over the Potomac River, killing 67 people. This was a marked departure from Army policy that states “Names, city, and state of deceased will be withheld until 24 hours after next of kin notification.” This was the standard process used to identify the other two members of the Army’s flight crew, Chief Warrant Officer Andrew Eaves, and Staff Sgt. Ryan O'Hara. It is the same process used to identify soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan—a process I followed as a military public affairs officer for over 20 years. Army public affairs officials followed the same procedures to publicly identify soldiers who died in not-too-distant helicopter crashes in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alaska. Yet, in an unusual deviation, the Army selectively withheld Capt. Rebecca M. Lobach’s identity for an additional two days. When her name was finally released over the weekend, the Army included a family statement of eulogy that praised Lobach and requested privacy. Army officials claim that violating its own rules was done to respect Lobach’s family’s wishes, but that decision casts an unnecessary shadow over her service and memory.

Working a casualty release is a difficult task. I remember each one that had to be done when deployed to Afghanistan as public affairs director for the 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division. Each time while combing through a fallen soldier’s deployment photo and service record, there was a painful awareness that I was handling information that would soon devastate this fellow paratrooper’s loved ones back home in the U.S. The entire brigade would be placed under an internet blackout to ensure the news did not leak out before the family was notified in person. This practice is taken seriously, and rightly so. Much of its dignity comes from its predictability and equal application. No matter the rank or position of a deceased soldier, the notification process is supposed to be the same for all—and was until now.

The crash over the Potomac is a very unusual tragedy for many reasons that are being unraveled by investigators. The Army’s special treatment of Capt. Lobach adds to that complexity. The information shared by the Army and Lobach’s friends indicate that she was a stellar soldier. However, stellar soldiers do not ask for special consideration—they demand equal treatment to prove that they are one among a team. Yet we now see a movement to essentially canonize Lobach as a hero while civilian remains are still being recovered from the submerged and fragmented passenger jet that her aircraft knocked from the sky. Army officials rushed to defend a single pilot among a flight crew of three and 64 dead civilians. This treatment echoes a 2015 Army study warning that male soldiers are driven instinctively to protect female colleagues over mission completion. In this instance, we see that tendency strangely playing out in a way that reflects allegiance to intersectional theories and bandwagon effect as much as complementarian instinct.