Arlington National Cemetery
Posted on 05/30/2010 2:29:03 AM PDT by GonzoII
The U.S. military didn't always bring home its dead. In the Seminole Indian Wars in the early 1800s, most of the troops were buried near where they fell. The remains of some dead officers were collected and sent back to their families, but only if the men's relatives paid all of the costs. Families had to buy and ship a leaded coffin to a designated military quartermaster, and after the body had been disinterred, they had to cover the costs of bringing the coffin home.
Today, air crews have flown the remains of more than 5,000 dead troops back to the U.S. since the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan began.
For those charged with bringing out the dead, it is one of the military's most emotionally taxing missions. The men and women of the Air Force's Air Mobility Command function as the nation's pallbearers, ferrying flag-draped remains to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware from battlefields half a world away.
The missions take a heavy toll on the air crews, but many of the pilots and loadmasters say their work is part of a sacred military obligation to fallen troops and their families. Air Force Capt. Tenaya Humphrey was a young girl when her father, Maj. Zenon Goc, died in a military plane crash in Texas in 1992. She remembers his body being flown to Dover before his burial in Colorado.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Read this thoughtful article about how the US buries its war dead, and then remember who’s in the WH. Your heart will sink. He doesn’t give two hoots about US soldiers, alive or dead. They’re a tool he won’t think twice about using against US citizens...seditionists (anyone speaking out against his regime) or ‘religious zealots’ like those 86 followers of David Koresh whom the Clintons and Janet Reno shot dead/burned alive. Plan A involves putting the US military under the control of the UN. Global governance/communism on the march with third world thugs in charge. But that’s okay, Zero is a third world thug.
A first cousin I never knew, an 18-year-old Marine enlistee, was KIA on Okinawa in April, 1945. His remains were returned to the U.S. and buried in a National Cemetery in March, 1949. It took almost four years, but they brought him home to rest.
My father was in the 8th Air Force during WWII, got out for a year or two at war’s end then reenlisted. He was immediately sent to South Korea by troop ship.
One of my mementos of him (he died in 1975) is a small note book he kept during the voyage. An entry mentions the ship calling at Okinawa to load U.S. war dead and how depressing it was to see GI coffins being craned aboard for their final voyage home...thousonds of them.
Had an Uncle (never knew him, I wasn’t born yet) was killed on Iwo Jima, they buried him in the Punch Bowl cemetery in Hawaii.
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