In Afghanistan, U.S. forces honor dead with quiet ceremony
Troops line up along a cargo plane ramp to salute military dead in flag-draped body bags as they begin their final journey home. The 'ramp ceremonies' have been painfully common this spring.
FORWARD OPERATING BASE BASTION, AFGHANISTAN — The word went out across the flight line: "Ramp ceremony!"
Two "angels," the remains of a U.S. Marine and his Afghan interpreter, were about to be loaded onto a cargo plane Friday night. Four dozen soldiers and Marines quickly lined the runway to pay a final, poignant tribute to the dead.
Ramp ceremonies have been painfully common in Afghanistan this spring. Roadside bombs are killing U.S. and coalition service members at a high rate, leading to many solemn plane-side tributes.
The events are reverential, dignified and almost majestic in their stark simplicity. But the Pentagon refuses to allow the news media to cover or photograph them, thus denying the American public a look at an enduring military ritual.
A Department of Defense regulation, "Release of Photos and Information Pertaining to War," cites privacy of the dead and their families. Invoking those regulations, military public affairs officers told two Times journalists to leave a ramp ceremony in Kandahar on Saturday night. Yet the night before, the same reporters were invited by Marines to join service members lined up to salute the dead at the Bastion base.
The Pentagon policy is part of what critics allege is an effort to censor the most searing images of war, sanitizing the suffering and death after nearly seven years of a grinding insurgency in Afghanistan. A similar 1991 regulation prohibits photographs of flag-draped coffins of war dead, particularly at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where remains are taken to a military morgue for transport home.
Despite Pentagon restrictions, a few iconic images have emerged: a photo taken the moment an Army sergeant realized a body bag contained the remains of a close friend in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and photos of flag-draped caskets from the current conflict in Iraq, taken by a contract worker aboard a flight leaving Kuwait in 2004.
The Pentagon tends to prefer upbeat and noncontroversial images. Public affairs officers regularly encourage reporters and photographers to cover battlefield promotion and reenlistment ceremonies, and the handing out of soccer balls to Afghan or Iraqi children.
Though ramp ceremonies are shrouded from the public eye, they embody the ritual honors and minimalist pageantry so beloved by the military. Fallen soldiers are anonymous, their flag-draped caskets unmarked and representing all America's war dead.
