Burying heroes: Where military and civilian worlds meet

During one rainy afternoon in March, the cloud cover had blocked out the Massachusetts sky enough that, to my memory, it could easily have been the middle of the night.  Freezing rain fell as it tends to in New England, so the turnout at the funeral was small.  As we stood there, on either end of the casket in our dress blues, we had to devote more attention to maintaining our composure in the cold than we did to the family members milling about the seating area.  Out of the corner of my eye, I glanced at my fellow sergeant, standing tall and proud under the sheets of rain and recall hoping I appeared as strong.

As long as there has been war, there has been a dividing line in perception between those who have been amid the chaos and those who have not.  While in uniform, we tend to think of it as a cultural litmus test of sorts.  Even service members that never see combat operations feel the rift between themselves and those that stayed back on the block.  The life you lead amidst boots and bullets is completely foreign when compared the lives of our friends and families, even stateside where the two worlds are separated only by a chain link fence.