No Times de hoje #147

With Memorial Day around the corner, the New York Times brings an article that remembers the fallen military in the current wars. The article focuses on those in the military whose job is to prepare the remains arriving from overseas so that they are ready to be returned to their families for the funeral. The amount of care and solemnity that the whole process takes place is commendable. 

About 6,700 service members of the US armed forces have returned home in coffins, from Afghanistan and Iraq. Nearly all went through Dover air force  base in Maryland, whose mortuary staff has grown from 7 in 2001 to more than 60 today. At the peak of the war in 2006 and 2007, 10 to 20 bodies would arrive each day.

__________

(...)

Sergeant Deynes began putting the final touches on Captain Blanchard’s uniform immediately after it returned from the base tailor, who had sewn captain’s bars onto the jacket shoulders and purple and gold aviator braids onto the sleeves — three inches above the bottom, to be exact. The sergeant starched and pressed a white shirt, ironed a crease into the pants, steamed wrinkles out of the jacket and then rolled a lint remover over all of it, twice.

Gently, he laid the pieces onto a padded table. Black socks protruded from the pants and white gloves from the sleeves. The funeral would be a closed coffin, but it all still had to look right.

“They are not going to see it,” he said. “I do it for myself.”

A week later, Captain Blanchard’s remains were flown to his home state, Washington, where he was buried in a military cemetery near Spokane.

His mother, Laura Schactler, said Captain Blanchard enlisted in the Marines after high school and served two tours in Iraq before marrying and returning home to attend college on an Army R.O.T.C. scholarship. After graduating, he learned to fly Apache attack helicopters, fulfilling a boyhood dream.

Before his funeral, Ms. Schactler spent time alone with her son but did not open his coffin. But later that night, she said, her husband and two other sons did, wanting to say one last farewell.

Inside, they saw a uniform, white gloves crossed, buttons gleaming, perfect in every detail.