Burial Detail

Burial Detail

Remembering Military Funerals and Fort Bragg

In late March of 1971 my unit at Ft. Bragg, the 14th Military Intelligence Battalion, was notified that the battalion would provide personnel who would perform “burial detail service” for the month of May anywhere within the state of North Carolina. Army, Army Reserve and National Guard units that had a presence in North Carolina rotated this detail on a monthly basis. The Commanding Officer of the battalion quickly delegated the responsibility for this detail to Company A, and the commanding officer of Company A promptly delegated the responsibility for selecting and training the members of this detail to the highest ranking enlisted man, a Master Sergeant also called the Company Top Sergeant, or ‘Top’ for short.
 
Top gave us all the word about the upcoming detail one day as we stood in our morning formation. The detail was to be a two-month assignment for two teams: during April, we would form teams and practice the various roles, and in May, we would be on call to perform our service anywhere in the state as requested by the Army authorities. One team would be the pallbearers and would fold the flag that was on the coffin. The other team would be the seven honor guards who would fire a three-volley twenty one-gun salute. The detail would also have the services of a bugler, and he would play ‘Taps’ during the services. One officer and a senior NCO would accompany the teams. When you were not on the detail, you reported to your normal workstation, there would be no free time off for serving. If you wanted to volunteer, you could talk to him about it. If not enough people came forward to offer their services, he would pick “volunteers” next week.  
 
During this period, the television news broadcasts constantly showed the flag draped coffins of Vietnam War dead arriving at Dover AFB. At the time, almost every junior NCO in Company A was a Vietnam veteran and planned to serve here at Fort Bragg only until their tour of duty ended. Some soldiers were dismayed at the prospect of interacting with grieving families and attending funerals of soldiers killed in battle. Many had their own war experiences fresh in their minds. We talked amongst ourselves and wondered why they were not delegating this to professional or all volunteer honor guard units, such as served at Arlington.
 
Top didn’t care much for the soldiers, like me, who came back from overseas with the rank of E5, i.e. Specialist 5th Class or Sergeant, because that meant that we were not eligible for the lower rank details such as cleaning pots and pans or mopping up in the mess hall during KP. Our normal details assignments were Charge of Quarters or motor pool guard duty. Charge of Quarters (or CQ) meant that you spent the night on duty incase there was an emergency of any kind that needed attention outside of normal work hours. This meant that you called out for help if something happened at the company during the night; if an emergency call came in you would call and inform the Top or the CO and ask what they wanted done. If you were a motor pool guard, they put you into the guard shack with .45 pistol and two rounds of ammunition. I always thought that the reason for this was that in case you missed yourself with the first round you might be able to finish the job with the second. These nighttime duties were not too bad, you got the next day off when you were relieved in the morning.
 
Assigning “volunteers” to details was one tactic the Army used to maintain quiet and keep the complaining to a minimum. Write to your congressional representative about the conditions you were experiencing and you could guarantee that you had a personal reservation on every extra duty detail that came down the pike. Complain too much about anything, and you would find yourself “volunteering” for some detail very soon. This was especially true if you chose to voice your opinion in front of the fresh faced new recruits. Top wanted the new privates to look up to E5s and respect them, not listen to them disparage Army life in general and yearn for the day they got out. It all boiled down to this: if you were going to get out of the Army when your obligation was up you needed to keep your mouth shut.     
 
Next week came sure enough and it was time for volunteers. We lined up for our usual morning formation and, just as I knew I would be, Top selected me for this detail. Top selected my friend Bill as well, another one of his favorite malcontents. Soon we had our sixteen “volunteers”.
 
We had our first meeting later that day. The senior NCO was a Staff Sergeant from another company in the battalion. He was a lifer and had been in about seven years, but he had done two tours overseas and was ‘down’ with the younger soldiers. As long as you did what he said and didn’t mess with him, or cause him grief from above, you could pretty much be your own person. He didn’t go out of his way to make life miserable for you like some lifers did; he was a good honest guy and I liked him. We called him Sarge. 
 
Sarge went over what the next two months would be like. We would form our two teams and we would practice twice a week. If he felt we weren’t looking professional enough we would increase the practice time as the actual month of the detail approached. We would wear our Class A dress uniforms when we went out to an actual service. The Army provided everyone on the detail with uniform dry cleaning and pressing at no cost during the month. We would travel in large Army station wagons driven by someone from a transportation unit. Though we were to have two different teams, everyone trained to perform both roles. We had seven for the rifle salute, six for pallbearer duty and flag folding, and three alternates in case of family or medical emergency. There had better not be anyone taking any sick call. The rifle team would use M-14 rifles instead of the M-16; the M-14 fired a larger blank round and tended to jam less as the rifle ejected the spent casing and loaded the next for firing. Those firing the rifles would wear white gloves.
 
Now it was time to form the teams and practice. The prospect of carrying coffins in and out of churches and performing ceremonies at the graveside did not really appeal to me so I volunteered to be on the honor guard that would fire the three-volley salute. Sarge accepted this with a nod. My friend Bill was a pallbearer and flag folder. We practiced in an auditorium for several weeks. We had a wooden tabletop that was about the size of a coffin and someone had fastened handles to it. We used M-14 rifles but did not fire any blank rounds inside. We all learned how to handle a coffin, fold the flag, and fire the salute. After the church service, the flag draped coffin would be placed on a bier by the graveside, and then the twenty one-gun salute was, and the playing of ‘Taps’ followed this. When the playing of ‘Taps’ was completed, the team folded the flag and presented it to Sarge. He would then hand the flag to the presiding officer for presentation to the next of kin. Following this, we would march as unobtrusively as possible back to the vehicles and depart.
 
In the last week of April, we did two complete walkthroughs with dress uniform, white gloves, and blank rounds in the weapons. The month of practice and preparation was over. For better or for worse the month of our obligation arrived and we were now on call for military burial detail throughout the entire state of North Carolina. The next time we went through our drill it would be “live”, no one knew what was coming, and none of us could have guessed.
 
During the month of May, we performed our ritual at eight funerals, but never at a funeral for a soldier recently killed in action. We performed at the burials of old veterans who had passed away and requested a military funeral, the right of almost every veteran. Any active duty soldier or veteran, other than those with a dishonorable discharge, can request a burial with military honors, and our detail would serve to fulfill the request of those deceased veterans who had served in the US Army and lived in North Carolina when they died. One irony was that the pallbearers never performed pallbearer duty because friends and family performed that function. After making one trip just to fold the flag, the Army decided that those of us who fired the three volley-salute would also fold the flag; it would require one less vehicle and save on traveling costs.
 
There was one funeral in particular that stands out in my mind. That day we went to perform our services at a late afternoon burial up in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. The drivers had detailed maps of the entire state, and they needed them. North Carolina is a long state and it takes some time to traverse its length. We left early in the morning for the western part of the state; we would need plenty of time to find the place and then prepare for the services. We had the address of the church and we knew about where it was located. The official word said that “further information will be provided” and we followed directions until we reached a small intersection of country roads deep in the rural fastness of the hills. We found the intersection and pulled over on a flat stretch of gravel by the side of the road. Soon after our arrival, a car appeared and pulled up to a stop behind our two vehicles. An elderly black gentleman in a black suit got out of the car and walked up to the first vehicle. After verifying that we were indeed the people he had been expecting he pointed at a small dirt road beyond the intersection and told us to drive up that lane until we met another gentleman.
 
We headed up the small road with the verdant spring thick about us. We traveled at a slower pace while raising a lot of dust. As we approached the required distance, we had all eyes peering down through the tunnel of overhanging tree limbs that framed the road. A parked car sat by the side of a small dirt lane ahead of us on the right. A tall figure of a black man appeared and he stepped out to the road. We slowed to a crawl and approached him; without a word, he pointed down the narrow dirt lane leading into the woods. We turned and slowly drove the large and loaded vehicles down through the trees. In a hundred yards, we came to a large open area surrounded by a thin hardwood forest interspersed with pines. On the left sat a small white church building on top of which was a short steeple topped with a cross. In front of the church were an old black hearse and a couple of black sedans. On the side of the church was a large dirt parking area. Beyond the parking area and running off to the woods was a field of grass about a foot high. We parked in the lot at the corner farthest away from the church. The officer went to talk with the gentleman who now approached us from the church. We got out and stretched our legs as we proceeded to put our gear together: we put blank rounds in the magazines, adjusted the fittings on the end of the rifles to facilitate the use and firing of blanks, and put on our uniform jackets and hats along with the white gloves.
 
The officer came back to the cars and talked to Sarge as he pointed to a dirt mound about a hundred feet away sitting in the field. As the scheduled time approached, we followed Sarge down a path in the grass and walked past a freshly dug grave in the field. Several rows of folding chairs sat lined up on one side of the grave; beside them was a pile of dirt from the excavation. Across the grave sat a wooden stand. Sarge looked around and then brought us through the grass to a place about forty feet away. As I walked, I could see small old gravestones sitting on the land in the grass. We formed a line and stood at ease with our weapons at our side. The trumpet player went off by himself to disappear behind some foliage in the tree line behind us.  
 
Cars started arriving and the lot became filled. Old black men and women emerged from the cars and went inside the church. Two or three younger couples with children also appeared. Some stopped and gazed out at the field where we all stood in a line, and at the mound of dirt that marked where the grave was. In a while, I heard the sound of preaching and organ music coming from the church; wafting out to where we stood at ease in the late afternoon sun as butterflies and insects frolicked in the grass of the field. Gospel hymns now came wafting out on the air. More preaching and music followed. Eventually the hall became quiet and the front doors opened. Sarge brought us to attention. A flag covered casket was slowly borne down the steps, carried across the field, and lifted into place on a wooden bier. Grieving family members sat in the chairs as friends and acquaintances stood behind them and around the end of the grave. The officer stood at one end of the grave close to the casket. We stood erect as Sarge gave us the command to stand “at attention”. In the warm pure air of the afternoon, the preacher made a few more remarks.
 
At a command from Sarge, we brought our weapons up to port arms and formed up for the salute. Sarge crisply gave the commands: ready, aim, fire. We did this three times. The melancholy sound of ‘Taps’ came out to the grave from behind us. You could almost hear a gasp, none of the mourners had seen the bugler take his trumpet and make his way to the tree line behind us. No one spoke as he played, some cried quietly.
 
After ‘Taps’ was played the preacher said a few more words, and then nodded to Sarge. He gave us a quiet order and we stacked our weapons in front of us into two stacks, butt plates on the ground and each supported by the barrel of the gun next to it. He then brought us to attention marched six of us through the grass to where the casket stood on the bier, and we formed up with three of us on each side. There was an old smell to flag and casket that reminded me of my grandmother’s house when I was a child. We went through the ritual of folding the flag. I felt strange sad eyes looking at me as I stood there folding the flag in the grass of a field, standing by the side of the open grave of an old black veteran near the mountains of North Carolina. I looked down at my shined shoes there in the grass and dirt. We finished folding the flag and gave it to Sarge. He tucked the flag and pulled it tighter, then turned to where the officer stood and presented the flag to him. Sarge marched us back to where one soldier stood by the stacked weapons as the officer could be heard presenting the flag to the next of kin as a token of gratitude from a grateful nation.
 
We unstacked our weapons and formed up once more. Sarge brought us to “shoulder arms” and we marched slowly through the field and back to the green vehicles and waiting drivers parked on the far side of the church. As we milled about the cars, the detail officer joined us from the graveside.
 
“Well, that was different,” he said. “Good job, everyone. Thanks, Sarge. Everything went well.”
 
“Thank you, sir,” replied Sarge.
 
“Now let’s go home,” the officer said. “It’s been a long day and it’ll be late by the time we get back to Bragg. We’ll grab something to eat along the way”
 
We checked the magazines for unfired blanks, stored our weapons, and took off our jackets, hats and gloves. I took one last look back at the people in the field sitting and standing solemnly by the side of the grave, the shadows growing longer in the late afternoon. We loaded ourselves into the vehicles and the drivers soon had us heading east towards Fayetteville. Later, we stopped at a small stand for hamburgers and a coke before continuing on our way. It was a long ride back to Fort Bragg, and I couldn’t seem to sleep. I was twenty-one years old and I mused about my own death, where and when it might be, and wondered who would be there to stand at my graveside, if indeed there was one. I realized that a flag draped coffin is not always about the tragic death of a young soldier with a grieving widow standing at the graveside. It often marks the end of forgotten old soldiers quietly laid to rest in remote fields on quiet spring days or frigid winter mornings, some with no family or friends to remember them or their passing. If there is a military funeral, at least someone will be there to mark a soldier's final journey.

Today is Memorial Day in the year 2008. Veterans march in parades, and children place small flags next to gravestones in cemeteries throughout the Central Valley of California. Just like every Memorial Day, my thoughts drift back to a sun-drenched spring afternoon as I stood in a field in North Carolina and listened to the mournful voices of the old black congregation as they grieved over the passing of one of their own. A strange disquiet entered into my soul as a relic of my participation in the events of that long ago afternoon. Through that day, I remain connected to a far more distant past, a past marked by the trappings of a timeless military tradition. The memories of that field are within me still, and they remain fresh and tender all these many years on.