Richard August displays the regimental colors of B Company, 1st Engineer Battalion, the unit his son, Matthew, below, an Army captain, was commanding in Iraq when he was killed in January 2004. More than 25 southern New Englanders have lost their lives in the war.

The Providence Journal / Bob Thayer

NORTH KINGSTOWN

Richard August and his family are part of a very exclusive, very revered club that nobody wants to join.

The Augusts are a Gold Star family; the gold star in their window is a quiet reminder that they have lost a child in war.

When the news from the Iraq war falls off the front page and fails to make the evening news, the gold star remains in the window.

“America is not at war,” August observed in a quiet conversation in his dining room yesterday. “The American military and their families are at war.”

August’s 28-year-old son, Army Capt. Matthew J. August, died Jan. 27, 2004 in a roadside blast in Khaldiyah, Iraq, some 60 miles outside of Baghdad.

Now, five years after the invasion, there seems to be two occasions on which all of America focuses intently on the war, August said.

People pay close attention at the anniversary of the U.S.-led attack every March, he said, and whenever the number of U.S. troops killed in the war reaches a total that ends in three zeroes.

With 3,992 killed as of last evening, the anniversary and a round number have nearly intersected. The presidential candidates this week have all spoken about their plans for Iraq, and the war is back atop the public consciousness.

More than four years after his son’s death, Richard August never knows a day without the war in sharp relief in his consciousness.

He wears a black metal bracelet stamped with his son’s name and a date, 1/27/04.

That day, the last day his son was alive, means much more to August than the anniversary of the invasion five years ago. As he sees it, the first Gulf War never really ended in 1991, and more than a decade of hostilities ran right into this war.

The winter holidays are an annual hollow season for his Gold Star family, he said.

That season leads into the anniversary of the attack that killed Matthew and two other soldiers.

Matthew’s birthday, Feb. 19, comes right after.

Those are the important dates for the family, the ones to be marked with a wreath laid on his grave at West Point, where Matthew learned to be a soldier and where he married fellow officer Maureen Elizabeth Innes in 1998.

“By now” in late March, said August, “you start anticipating Memorial Day again.”

Throughout the year, people with good hearts want to honor the service members who made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq. The Augusts get invited to more memorial ceremonies than they can bear to attend. “We can’t go to all of them,” he said. “They take such an emotional toll.”

Richard and his wife, Donna, have come to know several Gold Star families. Each processes grief its own way, he said.

“The way I’ve handled it mentally,” August said of his son, “is that I just haven’t heard from him in a while.”

August is 66. He retired as a loan officer from Fleet Bank in 2004. He has a 36-year-old son, Air Force Lt. Col. Mark August, who is serving in Germany.

Since Matthew’s death, Richard August has directed his grief into community service, as a board member for Operation Support Our Troops, a North Kingstown-based nonprofit organization that supplies troops with items they need overseas, and provides for wounded veterans when they come home. This year the organization is driving a campaign to raise $125,000 toward a new Warrior and Family Support Center at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, for wounded troops and their families. August said anyone can send a donation to Operation Support Our Troops, Box 404, North Kingstown, RI 02852.

His thoughts are never far from the war. “I think about it, read about it all the time. Got a shelf full of books about it. When I’m called to speak about it, I’m speaking from more than emotion,” August said. He has delivered remarks at a number of veteran events. He tells audiences that people who say they support the troops and oppose the war want to have it both ways — “and you really can’t.”

That point of view may draw some spirited argument, but it is carefully considered by August, who will be thinking about the war even when it’s not on the news.

marsenau@projo.com