This was written in the Long Island newspaper when my son was in Afghanistan a few years ago. He was in Paktika province near the Pakistan border. Not long after they arrived, the 82nd was involved in the longest firefight since the Korean war where they lost far too many good men.

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G.I.s' Earthly Rite
Troops bury pieces of WTC, Pentagon in Afghan soil
By James Gordon Meek, Daily News Washington Bureau

OBSERVATION POST FOUR, Afghanistan - It took a pickax to chip away at the rocky soil and make a hole big enough for the two tiny pieces of concrete and limestone from the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
While a pair of 82nd Airborne Division troopers dug, a dozen other soldiers made their way to the spot about 20 feet down the loose shale from their sandbag bunker at the peak of a long, jagged ridgeline overlooking the border with Pakistan.
These men who have seen several recent close-quarters fights with Al Qaeda were there to reflect on the start of this forgotten war, nearly four years ago.
In the gloved hand of Floral Park, Queens, Pfc. Derek Garrity was a distressed nugget of concrete the size of a silver dollar from the twin towers. It was donated by the family of a victim of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and brought to the border by the Daily News.
On the other side of the shallow hole, Bravo Company commander Capt. Brandon Teague of Houston held a donated sliver of limestone cut from the west face of the Pentagon after it was hit by an Al Qaeda suicide flight.
Standing amid scattered shell casings, ammo belt links and a broken mortar round from two brutal July firefights, Teague and Garrity leaned over to gently tuck each piece into the blood-red soil.
Pfc. Nicholas Chiruck of upstate Le Roy carefully filled in the hole with a shovel, smoothing over the spot with a few tiny scrapes.
Garrity and Chiruck saluted close relatives lost that awful day.
Garrity told his band of brothers that things had come full circle since the attacks on New York and Washington.
"Al Qaeda brought 9/11 to us, and we brought 9/11 to Al Qaeda," he said, raising his voice above the wind. "This is the line in the sand. This is as far as they come. These pieces stay here, and so do we."
Above on the black crag, a dozen more soldiers used their rifle scopes to scan a ravine marking the border, where Al Qaeda fighters have emerged to launch assaults.
The others bowed their helmets as 2nd Lt. Daniel Byars' prayer brought out raw emotion from under layers of Kevlar. He said the simple objects in the ground "symbolize people."
"I want to thank God for the opportunity to place this here in this part of the world and for letting us do our part to rid the world of terrorists," Byars said.
The group scrambled back up to the sandbags and down the backside of what the G.I.s call "Holy S--- Rock," toward a convoy of Humvees.
The burial site is exceptionally well-guarded.
Besides the heavy machine guns and .50-caliber sniper rifle in Operation Post Four's bunker, a claymore mine will shred the next jihadist who charges over the coils of razor wire and steps onto that sacred ground.
The boys of Bravo Company swear it.