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| "The Hardest Job in the Army" |
| 2003-05-12 |
| A moving essay about the work of Mortuary Affairs troops in Kuwait City and at Dover AFB. Some excerpts: At the gate, we come to a crossroads. One road goes to the military side of the [Kuwait City] airport. The other is traveled only by Mortuary Affairs personnel, who bring along the bodies of deceased soldiers in order to send them home. [Col. Richard] Dillon[, who commands the detachment,] made sure his people had access to a separate entrance, he says, because nothing shakes an incoming soldier's morale like seeing one of his fallen comrades returning home in a refrigeration truck. The soldiers live in the space where they work. Descending into this subculture, one expects a certain amount of M*A*S*H-like black humor, for coping purposes, if no other. In advance of this visit, I have read a Gannett reporter's account of his travels with a forward collection team (the Mortuary Affairs troops who travel to the forward areas, so that individual units can drop off their deceased). Their helmet graffiti read "Don't Be the One" and "Smell the Dead." Here at Camp Wolf, these young soldiers also have pressure releases. They laugh about overweight reservists and assign vicious nicknames—"Juggernaut" to the sergeant with the large head, "PW" (for "P-- Whipped") for the officer they heard chatting up his girlfriend on the phone. But there is one thing the company commander, Capt. Brooks Brenkus, says is never, ever done: "We don't joke at all about remains." . . . In another tent is a personal effects depot, where I watch a team go through belongings that a soldier left behind at camp—in this case, it was pocket change. They separate high-dollar items from low-dollar items, military possessions from civilian ones. Back in the processing tent is where they sort through whatever came in with the deceased. Every dollar will be registered by serial number, to make sure it all gets back to the family. All possessions are sent to a stateside depot to be cleaned. Nothing with blood on it will be forwarded to the family. Neither will anything that has the remotest possibility of upsetting a survivor—say, a photo of a woman other than the deceased's wife. To sequester these sensitive belongings, the Mortuary Affairs specialists, nicknamed "92 Mikes" after their Army job classification number, must fill out more paperwork. "There's a certificate of destruction that has to be filled out," says Col. Dillon. All of these records will be kept forever, since they still get family queries going back to Vietnam, Korea, and even the Civil War. From there, the deceased are put in metal transfer cases and placed in refrigeration trailers until they can be flown out. . . . And all of this, the 92 Mikes will tell you with solemn pride, is done around the clock—sleep is often not an option--so that they can get their fallen comrades on a plane within 10 hours. . . . Sometimes, it's not just the family members who need closure. At Camp Wolf in Kuwait, I met Staff Sergeant Carlos Roman, a former infantryman who now works the last leg on the Kuwaiti end of the Mortuary Affairs line. He double- and triple-checks that everything has been properly prepared. Then he puts his fallen comrades on a plane and prays over their transfer cases. Roman speaks with a thick Puerto Rican accent, and has a lineman's build, a bristly high-and-tight, and a pair of hard brown eyes that could intimidate an enemy into surrender. Often, the easiest way to do his job is to make those eyes stop seeing. "When we get ready to work," he says, "It's like I'm standing here, and it's a different person who steps out. I'm seeing, but I'm not seeing what I'm seeing. I'm just there to do my job. And once I finish doing it, and I'm done with it all, they're in the transfer case, they're sealed, they're in the plane, they're gone—that's when I take my moment alone. Have I cried and shed tears out here? Yes I have. Many nights. But I've already said that regardless of what I see, I'm not going to stop working. Because I'm still here. My family has the privilege of still having me. The other family members of these service members that I'm seeing don't have that. It's not going to be possible, you understand? Some of them are just not going to be able to be seen. And I'm the one that has the final image of them--me. Somebody that doesn't even know them. I feel bad. Who am I to be able to see them in this last condition they're in? On the other hand, I wouldn't want my family to see me like that. So in a sense, I take that last look. And when I get my moment, I do my thing. I speak to God in my own way. I say the things I need to say. And I pray for all of them. I pray for their families." |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #1 Well worth reading the whole thing. I don't know how these people do it. God bless them that they do. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2003-05-12 16:31:07 |