The Homefront

Golden Gate National Cemetery, San Bruno, California
Today, Tomorrow or Next Week


“Ready, Fire!” the sharp crack of seven simultaneous rifle shots split the grief thickened air of the cemetery.
“Ready, Fire!” again.
“Ready, Fire!” once again
“Order…arms.” The seven members of the white gloved honor guard snapped their M-16s back into the “Port” position across their immaculately uniformed bemedaled chests. At that moment the mournful melody of "Taps" sang out from a lone bugler standing on a rise a short distance away. The six uniformed pallbearers folded the flag that had draped Billy’s coffin in the traditional manner of a military funeral, each performing a single fold until the flag rested in the hands of the last in a perfect triangle. Billy’s Dad, Jim, listened to the sad tune as the flag was folded. He thought he could hear just a touch more heart and a touch more feeling in the age-old rendition. Maybe it was just the moment or maybe it was because it was his older son Jason who was playing it. Jason played trumpet in school and picked it up again to help pass the endless down time that is so much a part of being a soldier. They pulled Jason out of his unit in Baghdad to attend Billy’s funeral after he was killed in southern Afghanistan near the Pakistan border. Jason requested that he be allowed to play "Taps" over his brother. The Army loves gestures like that so his request was granted. Jason knew the stretch of road where Billy got lit up as he almost met his own end there two and half years earlier on his first trip down range. Billy wasn’t the first American kid to come home in a box because of an ambush there and Jason knew he wouldn’t be the last.
Jason was always a tough kid. He was a notoriously vicious linebacker who made “All State” in high school then went on to the Army going through Ranger School, then Special Forces. He had one combat tour in Afghanistan under his belt and he was half way through another one in Iraq. Today he didn’t look so tough as the tears streamed down his face under his green beret, some actually falling on the rows of ribbons that decorated his uniform and told the world that at twenty-two years of age, he had seen blood by the bucket full and death by the car load. He tried for all he was worth to finish his tribute to his brother. Near the end of the tune, he faltered ever so slightly as he almost broke down. At that, two soldiers that were from Billy’s unit lost it and bowed their heads to weep. In his four years in the service Jason had seen so many people die; now it was his kid brother. Jim almost lost it too. He felt he had to keep it together for the sake of Billy’s Mom who hadn’t stopped crying since the two Chaplains, from the local National Guard unit knocked on their door in the middle of the night to inform them of Billy’s death. Jim did his duty but it was hard. His mind kept flashing to memories of Billy as a kid. The Christmases and birthdays kept coming back. He thought of how proud he was when Billy’s soccer team took the regionals. He remembered the scoldings for a variety of youthful trespasses and the thousands of tender moments that seem small at the time but came back to him larger then life now. He remembered pride mixed with trepidation as Billy followed his brother’s footsteps into the army. At first he told himself that he just didn’t understand but he understood all to well. Jim had been a soldier once himself as were his dad and uncles and cousins. It was expected in his family. You graduate high school, enter the service, get out and have a life. He understood alright, it was the way it had always been except that Billy didn’t make it to the “have a life” part. What Jim didn’t understand is what the hell was in Afghanistan that was worth dying for. He had heard the “party line” over and over again, about how we had to fight terrorists there so we wouldn’t have to fight them here. The trouble was that the more the government and the media pounded that message, the hollower it sounded. Added to that is the fact that you never seemed to hear about a senators or oil billionaires child being buried just the kids of working stiffs and today it was his boy. Jim was rapidly coming to the conclusion that it was all bullshit. He was starting to feel that his family had been had. His Dad and all the rest had fought and sometimes bled for the greater good of some rich bastards that never had to put their own butts on the line. Billy died and for what? Nothing that he could see.
The flag made its way down the line of soldier pallbearers to the hands of a young captain who never knew Billy. He walked over to Billy’s Mom and gave her the flag and whispered “the thanks of a grateful nation” to her as he handed her the memento. She was near blind and paralyzed with grief and took the flag absently from the captain’s hands. Jim wasn’t even sure if she knew where she was.
As the flag was passed to the grieving mother, troops on the other side of the world were mounting up in helicopters and Humvees. Weapons were being checked and prayers were being said, prayers in different languages. The Americans didn’t know if today was the day they would find the roadside bomb with their name on it or take a bullet in an ambush. Afghans and Iraqis wondered if this was the day they would get blown to bits in an air strike coming home from the market. They wondered if they were going to get shot in the crossfire between Jihadis and Coalition soldiers or maybe just get killed because someone was having a bad day. Fear and death were constant neighbors, lurking in their homes, cities and villages. The “War on Terror” didn’t seem to stop a lot of terror. It just seemed to exacerbate it.
Jason finished Taps and bowed his head and cried unashamedly. Green Berets be damned, this was his brother.
“Grateful nation my ass” Jim spat under his breath as he wiped his own tears away, “I want my son back”.