NO TOUGHER DUTY, NO GREATER HONOR

In this debut memoir, a postal worker and U.S. Marine reservist is tasked with recovering fallen soldiers from the battlefields of Iraq.

In December 2002, mail carrier Bussler was leading an unremarkable life in Dayton, Ohio, working hard to make sure the people on his route got their Christmas letters each day before he went home to his wife and 2-year-old daughter. Then he heard from his supervisor that his reserve unit had been called up. The platoon was trained in mortuary affairs, which entailed recovering the remains of soldiers who’d died in the line of duty—a specialization that wasn’t needed in peacetime: “We were proud to be the only mortuary affairs (MA) platoon in the entire Marine Corps,” he recalls, “even though in reality we really didn’t know what that duty would demand of us, or what kind of toll it would take.” Bussler and his comrades would soon learn just what was being asked of them as they participated in the U.S. invasion of Iraq. With this book, the author describes his three tours there, during which he received physical battle scars and suffered the loss of comrades. The experience gave him a unique, intimate perspective on an aspect of the conflict that rarely made it into the news. Bussler is a capable battlefield reporter, revealing the remarkable psychology of “body baggers,” as his unit was darkly nicknamed. Here, he recounts the excitement his team felt when they recovered a dog tag from a burned corpse, which inspired high-fives among the troops: “It felt good to hold something in our hands that was tangible and as valuable as this, something that we could pass on down through the chain of custody that would eventually go to this fallen soldier’s loved ones.” He deftly balances the horrific with the quotidian, displaying a deep empathy for the dead while also exploring the continuing traumas of the living. By turns gruesome and introspective, though always deeply human, Bussler’s story offers an uncommon narrative of the Iraq War, and it’s a haunting one.

A remarkable, sometimes-devastating war memoir.