Marine Funeral

[BobB1]

I went to a funeral Thursday at the Beaufort (SC) National Cemetery for a friend, relative, and former Marine. RIP Uncle Joe. He was buried with full military honors. After the 21 gun salute, the spent cartridges were collected, and three were folded into the flag. The rest were given to the family for keepsakes. This was the first time I had seen this done in any of the military funerals I have been at, but this was the first Marine funeral I have been to. Maybe a Marine thing?

[Niner Delta]

That's interesting, never heard of that before. My last year in the Army, '69-'70, was in Hawaii and for a time
I was on a burial detail, we buried men all over the islands. I was the guy that marched in the riflemen
and said the "Aim, Fire" thing. We collected the brass later but never put them in a flag or gave them
to the family. Actually sounds like kind of a cool idea.
Of course when I was doing this, the military was not very popular, and giving them the shell casings may
have pissed them off even more. One time the guy that gave them the flag at the end of the ceremony bent
over to give it to the Mother, and since the Army had just killed her baby boy, she slapped the guy with the
flag right across the face so hard that we heard it clear back where we were standing. On the bus ride back
to the base, he showed us the outline of her hand on his face.

.

[Niner]

Now that must have left you with mixed feelings, Vern. Wonder if the woman ever had second thoughts about what she did?

Wonder what she thought a few years later when Jimmy Carter, as his first act as President, pardoned all the draft dodgers?

[Niner Delta]

I never thought bad of the woman, her son was dead, couldn't get much worse for a Mom.
She just struck out at the nearest military symbol, that poor Sgt. But you could almost hear
all the guys on the burial detail gasp, not knowing what the Sgt was going to do. He was one
of the guys that came back with the 9th, like the rest of us just waiting to get out. To his
everlasting honor, he never flinched. His head went to the side and he just slowly moved his
head back to center and never did or said anything, after a couple of seconds, the father
reached over and took the flag and the Sgt went on as if nothing happened. Of course we had
been warned that things like that could happen, but that was the only thing I saw.
Those of us on the detail had talked about it and knew it was the worst day ever for the family
and we always did our best, it was about the only thing we took seriously after we got back, the
rest of the "playing Army" stuff we did was mostly a joke to us.

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[Niner]

I'm glad I never got put on one of those details. Must have been hard on the PTSD....before we knew there was such a thing and that we all had some of it in us.

Only out of the way detail I was on for a while, after Vietnam, was the Ft. Sill main post flag raising detail. Right outside of the big building where whoever the biggest dogs were had their offices in the center of the old post. We would get out there, all dressed up fancy with silver plated helmet liners and raise the flag at sunrise. Nobody but the detail. It was a ceremony that was meaningless and strangely like a religious service all at the same time. It was all done in silence. Gives me a strange chill down my back to even think about it now. Those burial details must have been something like that....only more so.

[Niner Delta]

All of us on the burial detail had come back with the 9th, we had talked about the fact that
it could have been any one of us in the box and our family sitting there getting a flag, so we
did try to do our best. IIRC there was 17 of us on the detail plus a few alternates, 8 on the
firing squad, 7 on the flag folders, 1 bugler, and an officer in charge.
And we did look good, all had tailored khakis uniforms (no greens in Hawaii) that we bloused with
all black boots and white laces, white pistol belts and gloves, and even red ascots. We topped it
off with polished chrome helmets, not liners, actual steel pots.
My riflemen had M-14s with white slings and "blank adapters" so they would cycle.
I must admit, we did get quite a few compliments on how we looked. When we did a burial at The
National Cemetery of the Pacific (the Punchbowl) on Oahu, there always seemed to be enough
"Brass" around that were just looking for us to make a mistake......assholes...........

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