Re-member.

As I watched the funeral cortege pass down the street with its escort of flashing blue strobe lights, silent clapping crowds and lowered flags, I remembered… So many young men… and not just ours, theirs. Mainly theirs.
I’m back in Iraq, in the dust and the dirt, looking down into the trench in the early hours of the morning. Looking down on the remains of the two human lives, their grotesque corpses huddled together beneath the white flag which could not be seen by the gunner a few hours earlier in the AC130 a thousand feet above, circling in the dark night sky. A young man, no more than 20, but well trained and equipped and determined to search out and destroy his targets far below.
Unseen in the dark, the two friends, brothers, hold tight to each other and to the wood in their hands with its attached symbol of surrender fluttering above. They should have fled with the others, they know that now. But they’ve been commanded to stay. Why? Who knows. Nothing makes sense this close up. But fear and conditioning fix them both to the spot.
Death descends from above with inescapable certainty and violence. In a flash of terror the darkness sweeps in and fixes their grip forever.
In the early morning light we dig their graves, and as we dig I can see the hand of one of them; a young hand, a brown and beautiful hand, stretched out on the ground, the tarpaulin covering the rest of the remains.
I feel tired and grey as we place them in the ground and cover their bodies with earth. The Padre says a few words and afterwards, reaching into my pocket, I pull out a photo of my dear ones. I stare at it, but the colour has gone and it won’t come back.