Betsy, don’t forget to remind Daddy about your orthodontist appointment. You need to go in next week. Lulu, can you send me a picture from your party? I have the last one up on my wall.
Her fingers lifted from the computer keys. She wanted to say something to Michael, but what? He hadn’t written her once while she’d been here. Reaching out to him made her feel like her mother, grasping to bring closer a man who didn’t love her.
I think of you every day and I love you. To the moon and back.
Remember: Only ninety-one days till I get to see you again. Disneyland???? xxxooo
Mom
*
Jolene had never even imagined heat like summer in Iraq. Dust was everywhere—in her hair, her eyes, her nose. Her sweat was gritty, and as soon as she showered, she started to sweat again.
From her first day in-country, she’d known that every breath could be her last, and her nights were no better. She dreamed of fires and mortar and babies who forgot their mothers’ faces. She’d made an uneasy peace with death.
Injuries terrified her even more: the RPGs and IEDs ripped bodies apart, flung arms and legs into the sky and the dirt.
Never was her fear closer than on a day like today.
She was on a “hero mission,” which meant that she had flown across the desert to pick up the remains of soldiers who had died.
She had been doing far too many of these lately; each time she watched the ceremony, she imagined herself or her crew lying in one of these makeshift surgical hospitals, irreparably broken, waxy faced, crying.
Now she stood back from the hospital tent’s opening, among the crews that had been sent on the mission. All of them stood tall and straight, even in the pounding, pulverizing heat. Jolene and Tami, as pilots, could have stayed with their aircraft, but it never seemed right to them. So they were here, standing with their crew, to show respect.
The outlying-combat surgical hospital baked under the noonday heat.
The hospital was a row of dirty white canvas tents, connected by a network of wooden sidewalks. Inside, the floors were cement, stained with dark smears of blood. Jolene didn’t go inside; she was here to wait. The hero-mission procedure was very precise.
Besides, she knew what it looked like in there: cot after cot filled with the damaged and the dying. Gruesome, devastating injuries were survivable in this modern age. The field docs were nothing short of miracle workers.
It wasn’t just soldiers, either. Inside lay rows of Iraqi civilians, children and women, who’d been too close to an exploding IED or been hit by mortar fire. The smell was terrible, made worse by the unrelenting heat.
A doctor ducked through the tent’s canvas opening and held it open behind him. Six soldiers followed him out, pushing four gurneys. On each lay the black-bagged remains of a soldier.
Jolene and Tami immediately stood at attention and saluted. The look that passed between them was as solemn as the mood: each was thinking of how it would feel if the other were in that bag. Somewhere close by a mortar round hit, exploded through concrete. No one even flinched.
The doctor looked as weary as Jolene felt. He placed a hand on each one of the bagged bodies in turn and said simply, “Thank you.”
Jolene’s throat tightened. She looked down at the gurneys, knowing that the lost soldiers deserved this last measure of respect from all of them. One of the bags was small, too small, a bad thing. It meant that pieces were missing. The result of an IED or RPG probably. Beside each body was a small clear bag containing personal effects. Even though the bag was marked with bloody fingerprints, she could see the watch and dog tags and wedding ring inside.
It made her think of Betsy, holding up Jolene’s dog tags, asking if they would identify her …
The silence stretched a second more, and then someone said “Captain Craig” inside the tent, and the doctor went back inside.
Led by the gurneys and their silent watchmen, the two Black Hawk crews walked across the base to the waiting helicopters. Here again, the exact manner of transport was prescribed.
At Jolene and Tami’s helicopter, Jamie and Smitty saluted the bodies again; then they loaded the fallen soldiers onto the helicopter, using exquisite care, placing them just so.
As the loading went on, soldiers came from all over, some in uniform, some in civilian clothes, and formed two straight lines out from the helicopter’s open side door, saluting their fallen friends one final time.
She wondered who these fallen soldiers were. Husbands? Fathers? Mothers? Did their families know yet that their worlds had changed?
Jolene and Tami nodded to each other and climbed into the aircraft. Tami was left seat today. She leaned forward, placed the white hero-mission card in the windshield.