Looking Death in the Face: "Body Bagger in Iraq"

AP / Cpl. Daniel J. Redding--An ambulance loaded with injured soldiers. The less fortunate troops, those who die, end up in the care of fellow servicemen and women who have to carry out gruesome work while struggling to hold on to their own sanity.

Chris Hedges (Truthdig):

Jess Goodell enlisted in the Marines immediately after she graduated from high school in 2001. She volunteered three years later to serve in the Marine Corps’ first officially declared Mortuary Affairs unit, at Camp Al Taqaddum in Iraq. Her job, for eight months, was to collect and catalog the bodies and personal effects of dead Marines. She put the remains of young Marines in body bags and placed the bags in metal boxes. Before being shipped to Dover Air Force Base, the boxes were stored, often for days, in a refrigerated unit known as a “reefer.”The work she did was called “processing.” MORE...