War is... playing with fire.
The thing about fire, is it burns where it will, and does not care whose side you are on.
In 2005 Iraq, I was attached to a platoon of Marines, engaged in daily firefights.
The particular firefight that this installation memorializes took place at night, between allied forces in a fortified position and insurgents running across the rooftops of surrounding civilian housing.

The locals who had enough money left the city, as it devolved into the most dangerous place on earth.
The majority of the people stayed because they had no place else to go.
For me, this was the most heartbreaking part of war.
These people were caught between a rock and a hard place, most of them with no stake in the fight except having been unfortunate enough to have lived there for generations.
I talked to as many of the men (you don't talk to Muslim women as a foreigner) as I could whenever we "self-invited" ourself into homes either to investigate anonymous tips or to set up an ambush.

The vast majority of these Iraqi's were profoundly kind and courteous, had a working knowledge of the English language, and were often university educated and very up to date with world events, often more so than I was.
They would endure being regularly stopped and patted down for weapons, being pulled over for full searches due to constant random vehicle checks, and having their homes randomly invaded, sometimes with a knock, sometimes with their door being broken down.
Can you imagine living in a place where at any hour of the day your door might get kicked down and if you were a man the only option you would have if you didn't want to get killed would be to drop to the ground and hope that the 18 year old behind the trigger wasn't jumpy?
It was impossible to tell the insurgents from the locals if they didn't have a gun in their hands, and that's exactly what the insurgents wanted.
They might be disguised as a family member in a house that we entered, and we would have never known.
If our treatment of the locals sounds harsh, then the insurgent treatment of them was brutal.
They would force themselves into homes and if the men of the house did not agree to not only shelter and support them but to also take up arms and fight beside them, then they could be beheaded.
Of course, taking up arms to fight the might of the US military was a death sentence as well.
I felt deeply for the plight of these people, and it broke my heart when ISIS swept through Iraq after we had set it in some semblance of order and once again subjected these people to brutality.

Back to this particular story: it started off with a "common" gun battle, the type of skirmish that occurred on a daily basis: however, this time, tracer rounds from one of our squad automatic weapons started a fire in one of those houses.
I know from having been on patrols through that area that those houses were inhabited.
To be harsh to my own side, I think that the responsible thing to have done would have been to not engage at such a great distance that we could not accurately shoot at our even discern our targets (night times there, in a city with rationed electricity were pitch black).
However, the option would have been to either not return fire and imply that there were places and times that it was ok to shoot at US military personnel, or else engage in a risky night time ground raid upon an enemy with the high ground.
There are no easy decisions in war.
The fire spread to several houses, very quickly.
This is where the story ends, actually because despite horrible events like these being something a news crew would cover all the way through in a first world country, this was daily life at that time for me, and it happened that my shift was over and I had to catch a few hours of sleep whenever I could because you never knew when a huge battle could erupt and leave you unable to sleep for extended periods.
I know that we had an interpreter on the roof with a bullhorn, shouting what I think was promises of support to any civilians in the area, and I seem to remember at the same time there was someone on the prayer bullhorns in a mosque's minaret telling the whole city that the US military was burning civilians.
I'm pretty sure as well that not long after a ground convoy QRF (quick response force) reached the area and helped combat the fire and rendered aid.

This piece took months to make.
Each tile was made from clay, hand pressed into a plaster mold.
The mold had to be pretreated with release agent, firmly tamped and worked to capture all of the detail, and then gently warmed with a hair drier for about ten minutes before that tile could be released.
It was then set aside to dry with frequent moistening to keep it drying evenly, until I had enough to fire in the kiln.
Once I had my tiles bisqued, I glazed them with a copper-containing glaze to get the bluish effect, and then fired at different heats to get the blues to emerge, as well as burning some of the surfaces.
Once I had all of my tiles, they were secured to an oak plywood reinforced board.
The gold was hand-leafed one little peace at a time.
The end result was VERY heavy and due to a last minute move I was having to do on my own, this piece ended up being another installation that was abandoned, so again Steemit: you are the only location where this work will ever be memorialized and remembered.
When you think of war, I hope that you can remember this piece, and that every conflict has civilian casualties.
Those who are the smallest threat and least to blame are often hurt the most.

[edit] upon more reflection, I recall having a conversation with our interpreter later and him telling me that there had been women and children trapped in that burning building.
He was very distraught.
Interpreters had an extremely hard job: going everywhere with the US Marines, at the front of a battle, unarmed, and knowing that if the enemy ever found out that they were working for us, that they and their family could be massacred.
Many of them joined being led toward a vague promise that they might be awarded US citizenship, but very very few were and the majority were left behind, to face the onslaught of ISIS after we left.