Throughout the Second World War, the dead were sometimes buried in temporary cemeteries near the battlefield. Often, though, combat soldiers buried their buddies where they fell, marked the graves with a rifle and helmet, and noted the coördinates on a map. Families learned of the death by telegram, often days later. Only after the Allies defeated Germany and Japan did the Army send soldiers of what was then called Graves Registration to recover bodies and either bury them in military cemeteries abroad or ship them home, depending on the wishes of the families. Of the four hundred thousand Americans who died in that war, the remains of about a fifth have never been recovered or identified. America now fights smaller wars, and takes more care with its dead. During the Korean War, helicopters became available, allowing remains to be recovered and shipped home quickly. When I mentioned to Howard how ceremonious and expensive the handling of fallen soldiers seems, given the chaos of war, he fixed me with a cold stare and said, “It is, quite literally, the least we can do for them.”

The mission of a ninety-two mike is to deliver viewable remains to the family of a dead soldier within seven to ten days, and the job starts at the collection point. Wearing surgical masks, gowns, and gloves, ninety-two mikes make a preliminary examination of the body, sketching visible wounds on a diagram. They leave a soldier’s fatigues intact but search every pocket, cataloguing the photographs, letters, notes, and other effects they find. They either return these to the pockets or place them in a small green bag that they tie to the soldier’s wrist. They list the name of the deceased, on all forms, as B.T.B.—“believed to be.” Once they’ve recorded the wounds and belongings, they rezip the pouch and place it, by tradition, in a closed vehicle for transportation either by road or by air to the Theatre Mortuary Evacuation Point, an air-conditioned warehouse in Kuwait.

There, ninety-two mikes place the pouch on a wooden slab similar to an oak tabletop and set the slab atop an old-fashioned roller-conveyor, of the type found in supermarket basements. As they slide the body along the conveyor, they examine the remains again, making sure all personal effects listed on the forms are in place. Finally, they lift the pouched remains into a rectangular aluminum “transfer case” and drape the case with a flag, placing the starred blue field at the upper left, over the soldier’s heart. They carry the case, feet first, to a truck that will take it to one of several military airfields. When they need to set the case down, they always lay it flat on the floor. They never stack cases unless a mass-casualty emergency yields limited floor space. Once on the trucks, the transfer cases leave the custody of the ninety-two mikes.

Ritual and tradition attend every step of a dead soldier’s journey. At the airfield, soldiers and airmen stand at attention, flanking the ramp. Others unload the cases and carry them into the bulbous cargo bay of an Air Force transport jet. They lay them on the floor in a neat grid. It was photographs of flag-draped transfer cases—not “coffins”—on the floor of a transfer jet that made the rounds of the Internet and major newspapers in April. From Kuwait, the transfer cases are flown to one of two military mortuaries: at Dover Air Force Base, in Delaware, or at the Army’s Regional Medical Center in Landstuhl, Germany.

The bodies of Specialists Bangayan and Seiden took a slightly different route. Their friends drove them not to a collection point but, following their two wounded buddies, to the 28th Combat Support Hospital, in Baghdad. The 28th C.S.H.—known as “the China Dragon”—occupies what used to be Saddam Hussein’s private hospital, inside the vast compound of palaces that is now the heavily secured Green Zone. Until recently, the person who ran the hospital, under the command of Colonel Beverly Pritchett, was First Sergeant Kellyanne O’Neil, a forty-one-year-old medic with a gun-moll accent acquired in the Dorchester section of Boston. I met O’Neil, who rotated out of Iraq in March, at her home in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where the 82nd Airborne is based. O’Neil, who keeps a piranha as a pet, has long wavy hair that she pulls back in a severe bun, and tiny hands that are as strong as pliers. She is compact, radiating ferocity, but can in a heartbeat adopt the mournful air of a grieving mother. Known to many soldiers only by her radio call sign, China Master, O’Neil directed the hospital’s renovation and then the care of thousands of casualties—Iraqi and American, military and civilian—a hundred and twenty-five of whom died during the months she was there. She is intensely proud of the 28th C.S.H., describing, in gruesome detail, the endless variety of wounds repaired by the hospital’s surgeons. China Master was essentially on duty continually for nearly a year, overseeing emergency procedures in the hospital’s hallways, sometimes pulling a sheet over the face of a patient she had lost and walking directly to the next stretcher. “When I’m in the nuthouse, I want you to remember I like Hershey’s Kisses with almonds in them,” she told me without smiling. The day of the attack on Bravo Company, China Master worked first on the two wounded soldiers—both serious enough cases that they had to be evacuated to Landstuhl. She then turned her attention to Seiden and Bang.

It was her habit to undress the dead and cut the name, rank, and unit patches from their fatigues, if they weren’t too bloody or torn, to send to the family as keepsakes. From Seiden’s, she was able to salvage only the American-flag shoulder patch. She then had Bang and Seiden moved to a small tiled room and used a hose gently to wash the mud and gore from their bodies. “If the unit is coming to see the soldier, I try to make a nice viewing,” she told me. She put the bodies in fresh pouches, with blankets around all but the undamaged portions of the faces. (Bang and Seiden were among the last that she would attend this way. In mid-January, the Army ordered her to stop removing fatigues and washing bodies, because medical examiners at the morgues wanted to see all bodies unaltered—as the ninety-two mikes leave them—to learn what they can about how soldiers are dying.)

While China Master worked, the paratroopers of Bravo Company returned to their billets in the offices of the Al Dora oil refinery. Nobody spoke as the men peeled off their web gear, helmets, and body armor. After ten months of war and insurrection, Bang and Seiden were the first comrades they’d seen killed, and they were distraught. One of the unit’s N.C.O.s kept bursting into tears. “My platoon sergeant took me aside and said, ‘You can’t do that. You can’t cry in front of the others,’ ” he told me. Staff Sergeant James Haack, a square-jawed twenty-two-year-old Kansan who’d been both dead soldiers’ original squad leader, said, “I know it sounds funny, but it hadn’t occurred to me this could happen.” Captain Leo Coddington, Bravo Company’s twenty-eight-year-old commander, wondered if the platoon had established a pattern of travel on River Road which the Iraqis were somehow able to divine. Lieutenant Blickhahn, who had been riding shotgun in the lead Humvee, replayed in his mind the moments preceding the blast and tortured himself for failing to spot the bomb in the road. He learned later that the massive explosive, made from old artillery shells, had been buried under the pavement by someone tunnelling in from the roadside ditch, a technique never seen before in the area. (In July, Blickhahn was awarded an Army Commendation Medal for his actions that day. The medal can be awarded for “meritorious service,” but Blickhahn’s was awarded with a bronze “V,” for valor. Soldiers, though, are the harshest judges of their own performance. Months after the deaths, Blickhahn told me, “They defeated me.”)

Several soldiers helped pack up Seiden’s and Bang’s belongings for shipment to the Army’s Personnel Effects Depot, at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, in Maryland: books, CD players, toiletries, Seiden’s GameBoy. Soldiers at Aberdeen would clean and pack them for delivery to the families. Following Army procedure, Coddington made sure that Bravo Company’s cell phone and the soldiers’ e-mail-capable computers were rounded up so that no news would slip out before the families of Bang and Seiden were notified officially. But Seiden’s girlfriend, Tricia Ferri, happened to call before the phone was removed. Everyone in Bravo Company knew Tricia; she’d sent boxes of Oreos and had spoken to most of them when calling for Seiden. Usually, they answered with a cheerful “Hello,” but this time the soldier who picked it up said gravely, “Second of the 325th.” When he heard Tricia’s voice, he hung up.