(FORT SHAFTER, HI NR 02-10) “The moon is beautiful over Kandahar!”
Laureen Vizcarra, a civilian with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Honolulu District, who volunteered for an Afghanistan deployment, shared her experiences and journal entries in-between being sent to the bunkers during rocket attacks and performing her everyday duties as a data manager for the Corps in Afghanistan.
“We want our soldiers to go home safe and sound but until then, we try to give them a quality-of-life here,” she said.
Vizcarra states the one experience that personified this philosophy was her first ramp ceremony, where people gather to pay respects while sending a fallen United States servicemember home with honor.
“Laureen Vizcarra 2 centered”
She describes the ceremony as the singularly most moving moment that she has experienced so far. Uniformed and civilian, men and women from many different countries marched to the flightline, rendered a salute, and then stood at attention as the young sergeant’s unit carried his flag-draped coffin past with “graceful fluidity.” The song