if you haven't read dalton trumbo's anti war book, try this short one by jimmy breslin:
Haunted By A Soldier's Face
Jimmy Breslin
She didn't know his name. It was on a tag someplace and it had already been logged in. They did that the moment they brought the dead soldier off the plane from Iraq and into the morgue at Dover Air Force Base. The body had to pass through a metal detector in case there was some ordnance still there.
He had been taken right from the dirt of Iraq and flown here.
Now, he was on a gurney that was brought right up to her in the forensic dental department. The gurney was up to her waist. She looked down.
He had no head. Oh, there was part of his head still there, on the left side. Just a part. No more.
The left eye was there, wide open. The startled left eye.
"It was looking out as if to say, 'What happened?'" she was saying yesterday. "I don't think he believed that he was dead."
She stood and stared at that left eye and the left eye stared back at her. It was light-looking. Bluish green. The colors change in death. The amazement in this eye does not.
She began to dream of seeing that face as it was in his young life. A right eye, and a young firm face and cheek matching the left side.
He just started in life, she thought. He didn't even have a chance. Did he have a kid? Maybe he lost the chance to see his kid walk. Or to sit on the beach. Or if he didn't live near an ocean, maybe he could sit with his kid at a picnic. Watch the kid wave and stumble as he started walking on the green summer grass.
Look at him now, she thought. He'll never see that.
All that is left is that one shocked eye.
She was held by that eye as if it were drawing closer and was about to speak. She was not some shaking newcomer on her first job. She had spent long months in the New York City medical examiner's office working on what was left of people blown apart at the World Trade Center. And she had worked on several cases here at Dover. Soldiers with faces burned off. Or with little of their heads left. Like this one.
There is no face and she sees a delightful young face. Only this time, the thing seemed more than she could handle. She shook herself out of it. The teeth. She stopped daydreaming. It was her job to get the teeth and take X-rays of them.
The teeth were not in front. She had no idea if they were in one of the Ziploc bags that come in with a body. She froze every time she had to go to one of them.
This time, she had to go inside whatever was left of the guy and find the teeth.
There was a presumption of who he was, and the X-rays would be compared to records to verify. Then she charted the restoration of his teeth as they were before he was killed: what cavities were filled, what crowns were on, and compare this to the condition of the teeth postmortem.
She was in the middle of the death line for the soldier. First, they brought the bodies off the plane with a general and chaplain attending and then they came into the morgue at Dover Air Force Base. A soldier stood alongside and followed the body through the morgue. There were identification photos and fingerprinting. They came to the dentistry, after which there was an autopsy and embalming. Then the body was brought into the uniform room, where clothes were put on the dead soldier, if he was going to have an open coffin.
There was a room of silence, a grotto, for families. The Army went to thoughtful effort for the families. Despite this, not so many come.
After the morgue work ended, the bodies were sent out to their home churches or funeral parlors. The same soldier remained alongside the body until the last fold of a flag, the final cries.
She was relieved and came home to resume her work in New York. She thought about the dead soldiers and mourned. But when the face of the dead young man with the left eye came into her mind she dropped her head and wept. Time and again.
She looked at a newspaper and saw Michael Jackson and Martha Stewart. How could they dare put something like this in while there are dead soldiers coming in on planes? There were three dead women killed in Iraq and brought through Dover. They went unmentioned. This made her furious. She began to talk to herself. I am a professional. I have worked in disasters. I must stop this.
Then, on this Sunday in February, when she is home only days, she opens a newspaper and goes through it. On Page 18 there is a picture of her soldier.
"Sundered by War" the overline says. His two eyes are gleaming with happiness. There is that young, strong face she had imagined. Good-looking teeth brighten the smile. In the soldier's lap, looking out in wonderment, is his 6-month-old son.
