A letter to the Washington Post brought to the attention of the world Lt. Brian Bradshaw, who was killed in Afghanistan on 25 June. He was 25.
Bradshaw’s parents agreed to the publication of this letter, written by members of the Air National Guard transport crew who flew Bradshaw’s casket out of his deployment base to Bagram.
You can see a photo of Bradshaw at the Post’s Faces of the Fallen site. The Post does the best job of humanizing the Bush administration’s wars of any paper I know. Whenever they amass enough photos of those killed in Iraq and Afghanistan to fill a double full-page spread, they print them in the order of their deaths. (As the names appear on the Vietnam Memorial.)
I think they have enough to print every couple of months, sadly.
The description of Bradshaw’s final trip out of Afghanistan reminds me of a story in Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan and the Home Front. The essay is by a Marine colonel who accompanied the body of a 21-year-old Marine killed in Iraq home to his funeral in Wyoming.
It also makes me think of the funeral in the aptly-named town of Comfort, Tex., of Spec. James M. Kiehl, described by his aunt, Vicki Pierce.
You can see Kiehl’s Faces of the Fallen page here.
It’s fitting and proper to keep their faces in our thoughts.
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