Ramp Ceremony

Kandahar, Afghanistan

Solemn was the only thought I could muster.  I watched the ramp ceremony from behind a chain link fence topped with concertina wire.  I had been told the ceremony started at 11pm, but it had really begun a few minutes before.  I was not able to muster up with the rest of the uniformed folks.

A ramp ceremony is an event which memorializes one of our fallen.  We line up in columns, arranged by our constituent countries.  The casket is slowly carried into the bowels of the awaiting plane after a brief ceremony.  We show our support for our comrade who gave her life.

This night we gathered in particular to remember one close to us, a young woman who worked as a medic at the ROLE-1.  I had seen her at the barbeque not two nights before.  I remembered her as a lively, vivacious person, full of energy at that gathering.  I did not know her, but it didn't matter at this moment.  She was one of us.

The day after the barbeque she was transiting to a nearby forward operating base by vehicle.  They struck an IED and the vehicle was devastated, killing all aboard.   So just like that, she went from vivacious young woman enjoying herself with her friends, to being loaded up into the back of a plane less than 48 hours later.

It was quiet despite the fact that we were on the flightline.  Two Stryker vehicles, large green trucks that look like giant multi-antennaed insects rolled towards the plane, then past it.  There was a full moon overhead - a poppy-harvest moon?  C-130s took off in the distance, oblivious to what was going on in front of me.  The Canadians began marching in their unique, animated tin soldier like way.  Someone played Amazing Grace on the bagpipes, perhaps the saddest version of the song I have ever heard.  The coalition country's version of Taps was then played by a bugler.  The casket was loaded slowly into the gaping black hole in the rear of the plane.  And just like that, it was over.  Surreal.