The day Pfc. Shane Austin flew home was an ordinary day, as far as life at public airports go.

Delays and cloud cover. Passengers scuttling to make their next flight. Some were relieved when they did. Others were peeved at the frustration of it all.

The pilot broke the routine with an announcement.

A special flight, he advised. Please do the honor, wait to leave the plane.

Wait because Pfc. Austin, a 19-year-old from tiny Edgerton, Kan., boarded the flight in a casket. He was below the passengers, as cargo.

He died in early October in Iraq, trying to throw an enemy hand grenade from his tank.

Posthumously, Pfc. Austin received a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star.

Posthumously, Pfc. Austin silenced a planeload of people.

He made them pause in a way that all Americans should, daily.

This is not a political statement. There will soon be enough of that. The fact that October is now the deadliest month for U.S. troops will be discussed by both parties, each hoping for election gains. Proper times and places for such political preening exist.

But not the day Pfc. Austin came home. Not during his flight between Atlanta and Kansas City.

With two to three deaths announced each day, the Army regularly uses commercial flights to send home the bodies of soldiers.

The Army’s goal is noble — to get the bodies reunited with their families as quickly as possible. It is the right thing to do, the expedient thing to do. And it happens right under our noses.

The pilot of Pfc. Austin’s flight, a former Navy man, addressed this in his intercom remarks to the passengers.

He noted that people’s lives cross all of the time, intersecting in ways that most of us are unaware. He asked his passengers to be aware that day. By boarding the flight, they became a part of a young soldier’s final journey.

When the plane landed, the passengers complied. They waited as the military escort for Pfc. Austin got off the plane first, along with the captain.

Then, instead of rushing for their baggage, nearly all lined up along the glass wall of the terminal and looked down to the tarmac. They watched the uniformed honor guard unload the casket off the conveyor belt. A U.S. flag draped it. Pfc. Austin’s mother hugged family members.

Some passengers saluted. Some put their hands over their hearts. Many cried.

A colleague of mine was on the flight. He felt ashamed for his own grumblings about airport delays before the captain told them of the flight’s precious cargo. He was returning from a weekend spent with his son, who was very much alive and well.

Pfc. Austin’s funeral was held in the auditorium where he attended high school.

The deaths of soldiers like Pfc. Austin are the fodder of small newspapers. There, they are above the fold, front-page news.

In one Kansas paper, Pfc. Austin’s mother described her son as a daredevil. She told how she first assumed the military officials at her doorstep were there to recruit her other two sons, not to inform her of the death of her middle boy.

Pfc. Austin’s death raises the question, "What if we were aware of every soldier’s casket?"

A nation at war should feel more at war. Yet for most of us, this is not the case. Not without a draft, rations, other wartime efforts of past conflicts.

Even with the unending commentary about the War on Terror by both those supportive and critical of it, the lives of most Americans resumed pretty much unchanged after Sept. 11, 2001.

The very least we can do is pause when we board an airplane.

Aboard might very well be another soldier such as Pfc. Austin, returning home to his family.

Mary Sanchez Commentary - Courtesy of the Kansas City Star

Posted on October 31