Jodie nodded, quietly.
‘And partly because we lost the war in Vietnam,’ Newman said quietly. ‘That makes it very different. The only war we ever lost. Makes it all feel a hell of a lot worse. So we try harder to resolve things.’
He made the gesture with his hand again, indicating the unseen complex beyond the office door, and his voice ended on a brighter note.
‘So that’s what you do here?’ Jodie asked. ‘Wait for skeletons to be discovered overseas and then bring them back here to identify? So you can finally tick the names off the missing lists?’
Newman rocked his hand again, equivocating. ‘Well, we don’t wait, exactly. Where we can, we go out searching for them. And we don’t always identify them, although we sure as hell try hard.’
‘It must be difficult,’ she said.
He nodded. ‘Technically, it can be very challenging. The recovery sites are usually a mess. The field workers send us animal bones, local bones, anything. We sort it all out here. Then we go to work with what we’ve got. Which sometimes isn’t very much. Sometimes all that’s left of an American soldier is just a handful of bone fragments you could fit in a cigar box.’
one of them, and I promise you we never will.’ ‘God, why so many?’
Newman shrugged, a bitter sadness suddenly there in his face.
‘Wars,’ he said. ‘High explosive, tactical movement, airplanes. Wars are fought, some combatants live, some die. Some of the dead are recovered, some of them aren’t. Sometimes there’s nothing left to recover. A direct hit on a man by an artillery shell will reduce him to his constituent molecules. He’s just not there any more. Maybe a fine red mist drifting through the air, maybe not even that, maybe he’s completely boiled off to vapour. A near miss will blow him to pieces. And fighting is about territory, isn’t it? So even if the pieces of him are relatively large, enemy tank movement or friendly tank movement back and forth across the disputed territory will plough the pieces of him into the earth, and then he’s gone for ever.’
He sat in silence, and the clock ticked slowly around.
‘And airplanes are worse. Many of our air campaigns have been fought over oceans. A plane goes down in the ocean and the crew is missing until the end of time, no matter how much effort we expend in a place like this.’
He waved his hand in a vague gesture that took in the office and all the unseen space beyond and ended up resting towards Jodie, palm up, like a mute appeal. ‘Eighty-nine thousand,’ she said. ‘I thought the MIA stuff was just about Vietnam. Two thousand or so.’
‘Eighty-nine thousand, one hundred twenty,’ Newman said again. ‘We still get a few from Korea, the occasional one from World War Two, the
Japanese islands. But you’re right, this is mostly about Vietnam. Two thousand, two hundred missing. Not so very many, really. They lost more than that in a single morning during World War One, every morning for four long years. Men and boys blown apart and mashed into the mud. But Vietnam was different. Partly because of things like World War One. We won’t take that wholesale slaughter any more, and quite rightly. We’ve moved on. The population just won’t stand for those old attitudes now.’
Jodie nodded, quietly.
‘And partly because we lost the war in Vietnam,’ Newman said quietly. ‘That makes it very different. The only war we ever lost. Makes it all feel a hell of a lot worse. So we try harder to resolve things.’
He made the gesture with his hand again, indicating the unseen complex beyond the office door, and his voice ended on a brighter note.
‘So that’s what you do here?’ Jodie asked. ‘Wait for skeletons to be discovered overseas and then bring them back here to identify? So you can finally tick the names off the missing lists?’
Newman rocked his hand again, equivocating. ‘Well, we don’t wait, exactly. Where we can, we go out searching for them. And we don’t always identify them, although we sure as hell try hard.’