For families of war dead to travel hundreds of miles to claim their loved ones is an unconscionable inconvenience.

Sharon Bouchard, the grandmother of the late Sgt. Corey Dan of Norway, recounts the mournful passage from Western Maine to Manchester, N.H., to meet his military transport last March. A three-hour funeral procession ensued, during which Dan’s grieving mother rode behind a hearse carrying her son’s flag-draped casket home.

The image is heart-wrenching, and its existence infuriating. Bouchard says the military was unable to land in Portland, for whatever reason, leaving Dan’s family with three miserable choices: Boston, Bangor or Manchester. They chose Manchester, as the best of the bad options.

With the billions spent in Iraq – a petroleum-rich country – one would assume the federal government could burn a few additional gallons of jet fuel to return the bodies of fallen soldiers as close as possible to their families in the U.S.

It doesn’t.

As reported by The Associated Press, the Pentagon transports fallen soldiers to the “nearest major airport.” This revelation came through the AP’s sobering assessment of the war on rural America, from which a disproportionate number of Iraq’s wartime casualties hail. In many cases, the nearest “major” airport for these families is hours away.

This shortsighted policy has caused grieving families to endure a tragic sojourn, in which the somber formalities of honoring war dead can cause unnecessary anguish, during a period in which the grief and heartache – for anyone who hasn’t experienced it firsthand – is likely incomprehensible.

“It’s a battle I intend to fight,” Bouchard says about the cause of this situation, and we are proud to stand with her. (In the interest of full disclosure, Bouchard is a Sun Journal employee.)

A Michigan congressman, Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak, has introduced federal legislation to change the Pentagon’s policy on troop transport. He wants, quite sensibly, the families of the fallen soldiers to be allowed to select the civilian, or military airport most convenient or appropriate for them.

Stupak’s bill is H.R. 691, and is known as the “Fallen Servicemember Respectful Return Act.” It’s before the House subcommittee on military personnel. Its swift enactment by Congress is the least that should be done.

Most debate on the war is today tied to whether to send an additional 21,000 soldiers into the conflict; Congress has discussed, or not discussed, the merits of the “surge” to its core, with tempers turning molten about the merits of the president’s plan.

Searing heat should rise as well about the Pentagon’s policy on the return of fallen soldiers. Governments that send soldiers into war are duty-bound to bring them home.

All the way.