Summary

The helicopter crash left no survivors; seventy-three men died in the accident, including Avi Ofner. Friedman writes about the culture around dead soldiers in Israel and describes the field in northern Israel where there are “seventy-three pieces of rough limestone arrayed around a circular pool” (82). As Friedman writes, “there are many layers of dead in this country” (82). He describes the various memorials to the various wars across Israel and his neighborhood. He writes that, “there is a special language used to describe our dead soldiers, a language that makes them all sound the same, not just because you can’t say anything bad but because most were so young that there isn’t much to say at all. What they really were was potential” (83).

The helicopter crash turned out to be the beginning of the end as the security zone “began...