The mortuary workers there are divided into two groups. One group handles the soldier’s personal effects and identifying information, and the other group handles the physical bodies. The idea here is that no worker should become too personally familiar with any particular dead soldier. On one hand, that seems sad and depersonalized, but on the other, according to Stars and Stripes magazine, in 2010 “one in five mortuary affairs specialists sent to Afghanistan or Iraq returned with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.” That kind of bureaucracy and separation might be needed to deal with
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