The throne room was was in some ways an eerie place. If felt like that not least because the event for which I had gone there , was a memorial service for a US soldier.

Knowing that Saddam had been in that room several times and that right here and now it was going to be the setting for a memorial service added a surreal sense to the room.

Mike H. came into our overheated office in the palace - the outside temperature was about 120F and we had no air conditioning in the office - and for the first time I saw him in uniform. He had normally been dressed just as casual as the rest of us. The reason soon became apparent as he asked me, if I was going to the memorial service. Communication at that time in the CPA was more oral than anything else, so I had actually not heard about the memorial service until Mike mentioned it to me. I had heard about the sergeant who had died, but such news traveled rather quickly around the place.

Just two days before I had been out on an escorted trip, and it might have been sergeant Travis leading the escort. Thus I felt it only natural to join Mike and the others for the service. This was the least I could do to honor those, who every day risked their lives to protect people like me.

People started trickling in most of them were in combat fatigues. The mood was somber.

At one end of the large room was a small platform on which a pair of army issue boots placed. Behind them a rifle with the muzzle pointing down and on the butt a helmet was placed bearing the name of Sergeant Travis. The platform was flanked by the US flag and the flag of his army unit.

This was the first - but sadly not the last - memorial service that I attended, so I did not not what to expect. But what impacted me most was the roll call when members of his unit stood up and and answered when their names were called out - but for sergeant Travis. His name was called out three times. Neither I nor Mike who was standing next to me could avoid or many of the others present could help being touched by emotion, knowing that the name of this dead soldier had been called out. Tears were streaming down on several faces. At the end of the ceremony a lone piper played "Amazing grace". For me at one time both a tremendously beautiful tribute to this young man and a terribly sad moment knowing that he had died for us and that he left behind a small family somewhere in the US.

It was a very touching ceremony amidst the uncertainty as to where we were headed in the reconstruction effort and with ambassador Bremer having taken over from Jay Garner as the Coalition's civilian administrator just a few weeks earlier.

Little did we know what was in store for us...