Here's the photo of @PeteButtigieg that Jimmy Fallon showed. He was on a volunteer mission to deliver supplies to an orphanage in Kabul.

The soldier who was with him on that trip was Major Mike Donahue. He was killed in a suicide attack the day after Pete left Afghanistan.

While they weren't close, Donahue's death affected Pete enough that he later made a point of visiting his grave in Arlington. So when Mayor Pete wondered what might have happened to those kids, I suspect he was also thinking about Donahue & how it could have so easily been him.

He writes: "Nothing that had happened during the deployment would justify the pattern by which I returned safely and some of the others did not, but I had the rest of my life to try to repay whatever debt I had incurred by coming back in one piece."

"Not that it would really be possible to ever feel like I had settled this account. But it was clear that I would have to work harder than ever to make myself useful, after these reminders of the precariousness of existence not just in war zones but in general."