FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. — Soldiers dressed in crisp, green military uniforms have notified the families of more than 2,000 men and women of a death at war in Iraq. Now, as entire divisions begin redeploying, Army posts are training teams of volunteers to help widows or widowers and other grieving family members in ways historically left to neighbors and friends.

The 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell and a handful of other Army units are giving military wives classroom instruction on how to help a family of a soldier killed at war.

With pencils and pads to take messages, these "care teams" arrive immediately after a death notification and aim to keep life moving in a household brought to a halt by that knock on the door.

"Green-suiters can't come in and walk the dog, cut the grass, get care for the kids, wash dishes," said Karla Sketch, family readiness coordinator at Fort Campbell. "Care teams, their main function is to be there for technical support."

Care teams at Fort Campbell, where more than 70 soldiers have died in the Iraq war, were created at the request of wives who have seen each week bring news of soldiers killed in Iraq since the war began and wanted to develop a standard for a community response.

Family readiness groups at Fort Campbell have trained more than 400 volunteers to be care team members, each spending several days studying the psychology of grief to prepare them.

"There is no way we can script what they're going to experience," said Maj. Matt Ferguson, who has helped train the teams for the division's 4th Brigade. "But hopefully we can give them some tools to use when they assist a military family in their darkest hour."

Volunteers can run errands, answer phones, make travel arrangements for relatives, even be a shoulder to cry on.

They can stay as long it takes relatives to come, Ferguson said.

Sherry Orlando, whose husband was a lieutenant colonel at Fort Campbell before he was killed in Iraq, helped the 101st design its program. She recorded a training film detailing the whirlwind of emotions she experienced after an Army notification team delivered the news.

Care teams were not in place when her husband was killed two years ago in southern Iraq. But an outpouring of friends' support gave her the time to grieve in a way that the Army never could, she said.

"When you are notified of a loss like that, it's pretty overwhelming," she said. "The thing that it did for me was free me up to lock myself in a room and start making calls."

Creation of the teams marks a change in how the wartime Army considers its families, said Beth Chiarelli, whose husband commands the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, Texas.

That post was among the first to prepare care teams for upcoming deployments. Chiarelli asked the Army's historian to document the teams as a way families are uniting. Families on the home front often provide the strongest support for the military and should be a steady consideration, she said.

"Just 40 years ago when we were in Vietnam, those considerations weren't there," Chiarelli said. "Look how far we've come."

At posts that have trained care teams for deployments, notification officers will ask spouses if they would like a care team to help them. If they do, a three-member team waiting on call will come.

Army officials say care teams are among the first efforts to standardize support for surviving spouses by using what has long been the practice of military wives during war.

During World War II and Vietnam, neighborhood networks would spring to action when word came that a neighbor had lost a husband. After the Gulf War, military units formed family readiness groups to prepare families and support spouses during a unit's deployment.