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Vietnam '67

The Body Escort

The gravestone of Lance Cpl. John Michaels, in Moscow, Penn.Credit...Niko J. Kallianiotis for The New York Times

In late October 1968, I came home from Vietnam. With six months to go before the end of my four-year enlistment, I was assigned to the Marine Corps Supply Depot, Philadelphia. In late December I sat at a desk addressing envelopes when my sergeant walked over to tell me to report to the first sergeant’s office.

I looked at him.

He said, “You got orders.”

“Orders for what?”

“Body escort. The first sergeant will give you the details. Why don’t you get down there and see him.”

It wasn’t a suggestion. I was heading for the door when he said, “You can refuse the orders.”

“I can?”

“But I didn’t tell you that.”

I drove down Broad Street with a can of beer between my legs. I turned up the radio and ran two red lights. The Marine sentry at the Navy Yard waved me through. I found the red brick building and parked behind it. I finished a second beer and tossed the can onto the floor of the back seat.

Five Marines had been summoned, all of us recently returned from Vietnam. The first sergeant led us in to his office. For 15 minutes he explained the detail, then handed us our orders. Each of us was to escort a Marine killed in Vietnam to his place of burial.

I looked at my orders and saw Moscow. I thought, “Damn, I’m going to Russia?” I looked again and read: Moscow, Penn. The first sergeant never mentioned anything about refusing the orders.

In a room, a flag draped coffin sat on sawhorses. The coffin was empty. A captain who had never been to Vietnam briefed us on procedure and protocol. He passed out pay vouchers, airplane tickets.

I said, “Sir, what if the family doesn’t want me there?”

The captain chewed his lower lip and eyed the ribbons on my chest. He said: “That rarely happens, corporal. But should that turn out to be the case, you’re to consult with the funeral director, and then call the telephone number on your orders to receive further instructions. Any other questions?” Grateful to be finished, he shook our hands and wished us luck.

I spent the afternoon getting polished and pressed. I got a haircut. That night was New Year’s Eve. In the mostly empty barracks, I played a game of solitary pool and watched the war on television. I was asleep before midnight.

The next morning, a Navy van dropped me off at the Philadelphia airport. The sky was the color of dirty socks and smelled of snow. As I walked to airfreight, the cold concrete squeezed up through my shoes.

In a small, glass-walled office, a fat man in overalls sat at a desk. Telephone wedged between his head and shoulder, he smoked a cigar and shuffled papers. I knocked. He swiveled in his chair, saw me and motioned me in.

I waited for him to get off the phone. It was warm in the office and blue with smoke. The girl on the Playboy calendar wasn’t cold. I took off my gloves and flexed my hands allowing them to thaw. My blood was still thin from the tropics. The man hung up the phone and looked at me.

I said, “I’m here to pick up …”

“Oh, sure,” he interrupted and pushed away from his desk. He stood and put on a coat. “Come on,” he said.

I followed him across the freight warehouse to a coffin zipped in heavy gray plastic. “Paperwork’s there,” he said.

I unzipped the plastic window and took out the manifest. Lance Cpl. John Michaels and I were flying to the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre airport.

I said, “The plane leaves at one, I want to make sure he gets on all right.”

The man nodded. “Yeah, it’ll get on, O.K. Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, no problem.”

I said, “I want to watch him put aboard.”

“You can’t —” he stopped and looked at me, and our breathing clouded together. “Sure,” he said and removed his cigar. His voice softened. “You can do that.” He told me where to be and when. I thanked him.

The passenger terminal was crowded with the holiday. People were hugging hello and goodbye as parents lugged children and presents. I wanted a beer but settled for coffee.

When the time came I stood beneath the airplane, to one side of the cargo hatch and waited. I stamped my feet to keep warm and felt disrespectful. It’s his last ride, I told myself, stand still and take the cold.

Lance Corporal Michaels came out on the baggage train like cargo. The men handled the coffin carefully. After he was lifted into the plane’s belly, I walked up into the plane and took my seat. Before take off I stared out the window and tried to think what I would say to his family. If our positions were reversed, what might he have said to my mother and father and sisters? It could have been me in the coffin. Better him than me. No. Yes. I left it alone.

In Harrisburg, where the plane went first, I got off and stood beneath the plane to make sure Lance Corporal Michaels didn’t get unloaded by mistake. We took off into the premature darkness of a winter afternoon. Below, the countryside became increasingly patched with snow.

It was dark when we landed. Outside the terminal, behind a chain-link fence, a small crowd waited to greet the passengers on our flight. A pleasant, red-cheeked man in a black hat and overcoat stepped forward. He said, “You’re the escort for the Michaels boy?”

“Yes, sir.” I searched the faces behind him.

He introduced himself as Harold Snowdon, the funeral director. We shook hands. He said, “We’ll be taking the car out to the airplane as soon as the passengers are off.”

I nodded. He introduced me to his assistant and the driver. Snowdon said, “They will drive the body to the funeral home.” He shivered and rubbed his gloved hands. “Why don’t we wait inside?”

We headed for the terminal. I said, “Is the family here?”

“No, they decided it would be better if they came in the morning.”

I took the cold air sharply through my nose. The small terminal was crowded, harshly lit and warm. After several minutes, Snowdon said to the driver, “I think we can take the car out now.”

Lance Corporal Michaels was loaded into the hearse, and I helped remove the plastic case. Snowdon and I unfolded the flag and draped it over the steel coffin. I watched the hearse drive across the tarmac until I could no longer see it.

Snowdon and I left the airport in a silver gray Lincoln Continental. Snowdon assured me that Lance Corporal Michaels would be safe and well taken care of.

I said, “What about the family?”

“They’re good people. The father works for the post office, the mother works in a dress factory. There’s a brother, but he’s too young to understand. The family has decided it is best not to have him come to the home. Naturally they’re very upset; but they’re good people.”

“A lot of open land,” I said, looking into the night.

“Used to be coal mining country.”

The Lincoln was smooth and quiet and I treasured the heat. Snowdon said, “The father — he and the boy weren’t getting along. Nothing major, father and son quarrels, that sort of thing, but he blames himself for all this.”

I said nothing.

Snowdon put me up at the Scranton Holiday Inn at his expense. I started to explain about my pay vouchers but he would have none of it. In my room I was hungry but couldn’t eat. Tired but unable to sleep, I watched Johnny Carson and drifted off.

The next morning, Snowdon picked me up at the hotel. The funeral home smelled of flowers, freshly vacuumed carpet and furniture polish. My gut was somewhere up in my chest. Alone in a room with the coffin, I met Lance Corporal Michaels. Viewable from the chest up, he was young and handsome in dress blues. Very young, and someone had applied too much makeup to his face.

I tried to recall his face. Dirty and unshaven, maybe? Perhaps I’d recognize him if he was wearing a helmet and a cigarette between his lips. I saw my reflection in the coffin glass, my face overlapping his. It shook me.

Later that morning, the Michaels family arrived. Grief played with the introductions. It muted conversations and turned up the crying. I was lost. I wanted to be anywhere else. Right then, back to Vietnam would have been just fine. I assumed the position of parade rest and stood my watch.

The young Marine was viewed and prayed over for three days. Friends and family came and went. They cried, coughed and whispered. They stared at me.

One of the Marine’s uncles walked up to the coffin and said to me: “Why him? Huh? Can you tell me that, Mr. Marine? Why Johnny and not you?” He rocked back and forth. He got louder. “So what makes you special?” I glanced into his bleary eyes and then stared over his head until several relatives came up and led him away weeping.

That night, some of Lance Corporal Michaels’s cousins and his girlfriend took me out for pizza. They apologized for their uncle’s behavior. I spent a lot of time looking at the neon beer signs on the walls. I listened to boyhood stories about John Michaels. The walls of the pizzeria were closing in. I picked at pizza, had a couple of beers and avoided their eyes. I told them I had to be getting back to the hotel. They insisted on one more round and ordered it. They toasted John Michaels and his girlfriend started to cry. I drank the beer and waited for it to be over.

Lance Corporal Michaels was buried on a freezing morning with snow on the ground. Mrs. Michaels walked between her husband and me and held on to keep from slipping on the ice.

The Marine honor guard rifle volleys punched holes in the frozen air. The bugler played “Taps” and it was over. No press, no television coverage, no talk of heroes.

Back at the funeral home, Mrs. Michaels hugged me hard. Her eyes were red. Mr. Michaels, his face gray, shook my hand and thanked me. Snowdon drove me to the airport and I don’t remember flying back to Philadelphia.

Several weeks later I received a letter from the Michaels. They thanked me for all I had done. Alone in the barracks, I read the letter for a second time and punched my wall locker. And then I punched it again.

George Masters served in the United States Marine Corps from 1965 to 1969.

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