Esquire's Version of Shock & Awe

It's also an emotionally devastating job, and Sparks tries to comfort the men and women who do it. But sometimes he, too, is overwhelmed by the sheer number of "transfer cases" arriving at Dover.

"I'm born and raised religious, that's my job, that's what I do," the chaplain told Jones. "But a lot of what religion has to offer doesn't speak very well to fourteen transfer cases. Is that an awful thing to say?"

His body embalmed and reconstructed, Joe Montgomery was flown to Freeman Field in Seymour, Ind., where he was met by his mother, his wife, his young children, and scores of family, friends and neighbors.

"It seems the smaller the town, the bigger the turnout," said the pilot who flew the body to Indiana.

Escorted by Indiana state troopers and 60 members of a biker group called the Patriot Guard Riders, Montgomery's casket rode home to Scottsburg in a motorcade that stretched for three miles.

"Volunteer fire departments, dressed in full uniform, stood at attention in front of their shining trucks," Jones writes. "Farmers drove across their fields of baby corn to reach the shoulder and stood in the beds of their old pickup trucks."

Along the way, a mechanic, his overalls and his face blackened with oil, climbed out from under the car he was working on and stood "perfectly straight, perfectly still, saluting the hearse."

In Scottsburg, Montgomery's funeral was attended by scores of friends and neighbors, including 15 high school pals who wore black Nine Inch Nails T-shirts. Also attending was Army Brig. Gen. Belinda Pinckney, who looked at Montgomery's young, pretty wife, Missie, and decided that she needed some help.

"She had this look on her face and in my mind she was not dealing with the death of her husband, so I decided to approach her," Pinckney later told Jones. "I went up to her and said, 'How are you doing?' And with a straight face, she said, 'Fine.' I said, 'Missie, look at me. You're not fine. It's okay not to be fine.' That's when she started crying, when I told her it was okay to cry. . . . I just hugged her, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay. That was her letting go. And I wanted that. I wanted to connect with her."

Written in a somber, understated style, Jones's story is quietly heartbreaking. Moving at a slow, stately pace, he shows how members of the U.S. Army -- from fellow grunts right up to Pinckney -- treated Sgt. Joe Montgomery with love, honor and dignity after he died in Iraq. Whether the men who conceived, planned and executed the war acted with as much honor, wisdom and compassion is, of course, another question entirely.