Farewell on a dark tarmac

"His commanders gave Airman 1st Class LeeBernard E. Chavis the proud emblem of their squadron -- a blue-and-yellow flag known as a guidon -- because they knew he would rather die than lose it.

The 21-year-old District native carried it from the unit's home base in the hills of Georgia to the sands of Kuwait and onto the streets of Baghdad, where, on Saturday, he was killed by a sniper as he tried to keep civilians away from a suspected roadside bomb."

These are the open paragraphs of a stark and sombre piece in The Washington Post on what is known as patriot detail in Baghdad. It ought to be mandatory reading for all the politicians and their followers who were so eager to go into Iraq and are now figuring out how to extricate themselves. As the article says:

"This type of ceremony, known as a patriot detail, is rarely observed by anyone outside the military -- not by the president, not by members of Congress, not by the children or spouse of the fallen service member."

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Mahler's Prodigal Son

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