Vic Socotra

06 February 2010

Going Home

Someone leaned over and said, “You live here. You must have gone to a lot of these things.” I nodded. The organist was warming up at the front of the Old Chapel at Fort Myer.

“A dozen?” the man asked.

I smiled enigmatically. “I wish it were just a dozen.”

Death Junior told me they are currently doing thirty funerals a day at the cemetery, between the retired folks and the active duty personnel who are doing the fighting.
Not all of that is with full military honors, of course.

Some of the class “B” ceremonies just include a detail of pallbearers from the appropriate service, a chaplain, maybe and then they are done.

That I what Jack had, with a few Coasties carrying the urn to the Columbarium, and the procession comprised of me and Mary Margaret’s cars, and the Comcast Service van the dispatcher sent, since that was Jack’s last job

Rex was getting the full deal, flag officer honors and everything.

DJ drove the hearse over from the funeral home for Rex’s over on his second-to-last ride on this earth. I hung out with her for a while until Sid tapped my shoulder and told me Jinny was starting to get a chill and wanted to go in.

The crowd was impressive, considering that travel was likely to be impossible later on. Captain Tan’s family was there, all the way from California. He had been in the navy of the Republic of Vietnam, the one that did not survive, and he did fifteen years in a re-education camp after the war. Rex had sponsored his emigration to America, and Tan’s grandson was there in the uniform of a US Navy lieutenant.

The snow was holding off, so far, and the temperature was holding in the upper thirties.

I walked with her down to the second row on the right, and sat down as she organized her purse and gloves and fur coat around her.

It looked like we might get this thing done after all, regardless of what happened later. The full honors funeral for a three star Admiral is pretty impressive. The Army contributes the caisson drawn by six horses, plus a sergeant who rides alone. The Navy contributes the duty One Star from Naval District Washington with sword, the Chaplain, eight sideboys as pallbearers, the Navy Marching band, a company of sailors and a firing detail of riflemen.

There is a 105mm howitzer crew somewhere on the grounds, and they gave 15 rounds in Rex’s honor on command from the NCO who stands unobtrusively under the trees with his push-to-talk radio. Another General Officer was being interred, and we could hear the booming of his fifteen rounds off in the distance.

Making all the moving parts work effortlessly is a pretty impressive achievement, and it was beginning to move as the organist came to a halt and the music swelled into the chapel from the band outside.

There was an assortment of martial sounds that went along with the brass-tinged music, shouted commands, the muffled smack of rifles on gloved hands. We could not see from the front of the chapel, but I knew from experience that the honor guard had transferred he casket from the hearse to the wheeled bier. One sailor advanced with the personal flag of a Vice Admiral, three white stars on blue, and took up position to the right side of the pulpit. Two sailors maneuvered it so that the blue field on the flag over Rex’s heart was oriented properly to the altar.

I thought that Intelligence officers, being of the Restricted Line, were entitled to the white flag with blue stars, but there had been a difference of opinion about that in the Bluesmobile coming onto the Joint Base Ft Myer-Henderson Hall, and no one seemed to be completely sure.

My experience with Navy ceremonies down through the years was to follow what everyone else seemed to be doing at the moment. The working Fleet and shore commands where I worked left the crisp precision to the professionals who do this stuff for a living.

And they are very good.

Chaplain John Miyahara called us all to worship and gave the invocation. We sang “Nearer my God to Thee,” and we walked through Psalm 23.

Earl Jr. gave one of the nicest eulogies I have heard, words of a free-thinking son to hard-driving but compassionate and loving father. Back in they day, when Rex came home from Vietnam, he discovered that Earl was reading “The Lord of the Rings.” It was part of the great resurgence of magic and mystery in the youth culture, and though J.R.R. Tolkien didn’t have much to do with national intelligence collection strategies, Rex took the time to read “The Fellowship of the Ring” to stay somewhere on the same page as his son.

Then we sang Eternal Father, Strong to Save that always makes me cry, and the sailors turned the bier around, followed by the flagbearer, and we followed casket out to the front door.

The shouting began, from the Lieutenant Commander to the Chief to the Band to the sailors arrayed in ranks. The Honor Guard took position around the casket, folding the flag slightly to permit a good solid grip and hoisted Rex up onto the caisson, sliding it forward on the creaking rollers.

The troopies sat tall on the white horses. The casket was secured, and the Arlington director of funerals told us to fall in on the formation in our cars. I got the doors open on the Bluesmobile and drove over a curb or two to cut off a couple former Director’s of Naval Intelligence to get in position behind the black Lincoln with Earl Jr. and his family.

Then, the parade moved off. Briskly, band in the lead, honor escort rifles on shoulders and the stately motion of the horses.

One thing about the early ceremonies I have noticed is that there is a lot more manure and piss than at other times of the day. It is one of the things I appreciate about the ritual. These are the last working horses in an Army that used to depend on them utterly. It connects the ritual direct to an older way of life.

There were groups of tourists knotted around the cemetery; the articulated Tourmobile bus delivers them at intervals to the Kennedys and the Tomb of the Unknown. They watched and took pictures from the hills as Rex’s procession wound down the hill from the chapel. I put the car in “1st” to accommodate the stately speed of the marching sailors and the eternal rhythm of the horses.

The formation turned off the road below the stone and brick veranda that bonds part of Arlington House. This is an exclusive part of the cemetery, and since Rex’s wife Dee had been buried here more than a decade ago, the gravesite was nearly fifty yards from the paved road where the caisson and the patient horses waited.

Death Junior accompanied the procession right to the grave. Part of Murhpey’s total service.

The ground was covered with the snow of earlier in the week, and the grass below was churned by marching feet into slippery mud.

The firing party, honor guard and band took up station around the grave. There were too many stones in place for the moveable shelter to be brought up, so the gravesite was wide open to the gray skies.

The duty flag officer had his place. The Chaplain was waiting.

We parked two abreast on the road and emerged as the pallbearers adjusted the flag for transit mode, and moved elegantly off with the casket over the snowy ground.

This was tricky. I have been in the pouring rain here, and sweating hard after the long walk down the hill in the sodden summer. But I have never hiked in the snow, holding the delicate arm of a grieving woman.

No one fell until later, on the way down, and there were no injuries.

The words from Chaplain Miyhara were brisk and to the point. The cannon fire was measured and authoritative. The rifle salute was three volleys of seven shots, and never fails to make me flinch as I try to take the picture; the band was on key, and the timing was flawless.

The Flag was folded with precision and respect, and presented to the duty Admiral, who turned, and presented it in turn to Jinny. He moved down the line to Earl Jr. and Colleen and the kids, shaking each hand gravely.

The last commands were given, and the firing party and the honor guard and the band filed off up the hill, away from the grave and the mourners. The Funeral Director thanked everyone for coming and left us all to move back down the hill to the cars.

This is the moment of these things that penetrates me deepest. I first felt it at Frank Notz’s funeral, years ago, and have felt it deeply each time since. All the ceremony, all the pomp, all the ritual of the presentation of the flag.

Then everyone walks away, and the casket is left there on the rack over the government-provided concrete vault.
I know there are men waiting to put it in the ground and get it covered. The backhoe was waiting just up the hill. Still, leaving the warm well-waxed finish of the brown wood under those gray skies always fills me with a little unease.