I remember like it was yesterday, standing around the human body.  Dead, lying in the sand, bloated from baking in the desert sun, with a stomach larger than 3 watermelons.  His face was flat, not broken; bruised or scared, just flat...he had a mustache and no shirt.  We huddled around him like an American football team who were discussing the next play, but without saying any words.  Were we all thinking the same thing, or something completely different?   

Shortly after the ground assault, while we were still in Iraq, a platoon would get to go on patrol.  This was a big deal because most of the time we would be stationary, play spades and pull guard duty 24x7.  Doing patrol was like the 1 hour per day of outside time a death row inmate gets, still caged, but hopefully, different.  On this day, 1st platoon would find a dead person.

 It was another tank, A3, who first spotted him, but we rushed to the scene once they announced the find on the radio.  My tank, A2, pulled up, I looked out and saw him through the periscopes.  I dropped the back hatch so the loaders could exit; I turned off the engine, popped my hatch and jumped out to join the others in the circle.

 On patrol, we would drive in strategic patterns designed to cover the most area with minimal effort.  We would rarely travel on a road, I could see no road, there were no roads.  20 minutes pass, we've buried the man, correctly, respecting his religion.  Off in the distance, we notice a cloud of dust and in front of it is little red auto.  It is coming towards us.

 No one takes cover, no one does anything but wait for them to arrive a short distance from us.  It was a young man and his father.  They are searching the southern Iraqi desert for their brother / son who was a member of the republican guard, whom they hadn't heard from in many, many days.  I can see the sadness, but no anger, when he tries to communicate with us.  He wants to know if we’ve seen his son, holding a picture of him, proudly, painfully…humble, high into the air.  “No, but we’ve just buried one over there,” some one eagerly said from behind.  The answer created a deep, sharp pain in my left shoulder, causing me to bend slightly forward to the right, stomach muscles tightening.  The voice from the back pointing to the slightly darker, slightly elevated mound of sand, proudly sounding like it was the answer everyone wanted to hear.  Seeing their faces, I know they didn't understand the words, but understood what the visual symbolized, as if they had experienced it a hundred times. 

 They proceeded to exhume him.  It was eternally damaging to hear the cry of sorrow when he determined the body was not his son.  I wonder, still today, if the sob would have sounded different if it would have been his son.  The father fell softly, completely into the arms of the young man who compassionately accommodated him.  The young man, in this moment, stronger than the father, returning the care he was provided before?

 They cover the man back, murmur some words and walk towards us.  The father holds the picture of his son in the air as he walks past us, hoping that some memory would be dislodged from our minds….nothing….silence…sorrow.  They get back into the little red auto and drive off into the desert searching for something they both know, something we all know they will not find.

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