All Things Considered producer Graham Smith reflects for a moment on being at a Memorial Day service with U.S. troops in Kandahar yesterday:
It's a strange thing, to be in a combat zone during war time. You always hear the speeches back home, and you know vaguely that the holiday hails from the Civil War and honors the war dead. But here, it's got a different resonance. And as the colonel in charge of the operation gave his speech, and as his aides read the roll call of the 32 service members they've lost in the last year here in this part of the country, you could feel the sense of the sacred. Even though I stood with one foot in and one foot out — a civilian but an American.
Monday's Memorial Day service at Kandahar Air Field.
Graham, NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman and NPR video journalist David Gilkey are on assignment in Afghanistan.
Comments
Discussions for this story are now closed. Please see the Community FAQ for more information.