For some reason, this quote stuck with me all day today, and I couldn't shake the image that it had conjured up from out of my mind. I ran across it in a Des Moines Register article covering the funeral of Specialist Donald Nichols, who was killed last week while on patrol outside of Mehtar Lam in Laghman Province.
Joe Nichols was in Kandahar at the time of his brother's death, and accompanied Donald's casket back to the United States. He wrote the following while in the air on an Air Force cargo plane making it's way to Dover, Delaware...
"We were supposed to come home together and tell stories and joke about the things that only we could understand. If I would have known that I was going to be 10,000 feet in the air, on a plane with my little brother's body under my feet, I would go back to every time we ever got a chance to talk to each other and tell him how much I respected and loved him. And he should never look up to me, but I should look up to him because he is a true hero."
I can't imagine how difficult that plane ride must have been for Joe Nichols.
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