Forty-four U.S. troopers have died so far this month

[pscot]

The story of one soldier's homecoming is told in the May Esquire. The paragraphs below are from a review/summary in today's WaPo. Click on the link for a fuller representation. I strongly recommend that you read the original article. Esquire has done a consistently fine job covering the toll this savage and misbegotten war has exacted on our troops. You might want to have a hanky or a box of kleenex handy if you read the Esquire piece.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/28/AR2008042802235_2.html

"The Things That Carried Him," by Chris Jones, is the true story of Sgt. Joe Montgomery's death in Iraq and his nine-day journey home to Scottsburg, Ind., to be buried. It's a very strange article -- essentially the story of the transportation of a corpse -- and Jones makes it even stranger by telling it in reverse chronology, beginning with the funeral and moving slowly backward to the moment when Montgomery was killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad....


His body was placed in an aluminum "transfer case," packed in ice, and flown to Kuwait, then to Germany, then to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where the U.S. military maintains the world's largest mortuary. Montgomery arrived in a shipment of 14 corpses -- 10 soldiers, two Marines and a body too mangled to be identified...

Jones details the work of the military morticians, who treat the bodies of their fallen comrades with a deep sense of brotherly love. "The mortician assigned to Sergeant Montgomery put him back together as best he could. He built a right hand out of gauze and cotton and similarly stuffed the legs of his uniform pants. He paid particular attention to Sergeant Montgomery's face, which, with the help of the airmen stationed alongside him, he washed and shaved and layered in makeup." ...

Escorted by Indiana state troopers and 60 members of a biker group called the Patriot Guard Riders, Montgomery's casket rode home to Scottsburg in a motorcade that stretched for three miles...

[Tangerine LaBamba]

1. I went and read the whole article

My day just stopped. Everything else faded. I am speechless.

You did a great service, posting this here. Even though I just subscribed to Esquire (last week), I'm not sure I'd have gotten this issue. Thank you very much.

This piece ranks with "Johnny Got His Gun" and "Paths Of Glory" as some of the best anti-war art ever created. It deserves, at the very least, a Pulitzer.

Thank you again.