My orders were to be ‘military escort of a deceased soldier,’ but this soldier was my best friend.
As I strode up the steps and through the door of Building Number 4, I was stopped cold in my tracks at the sight before me. In the gloomy half-light of the warehouse, spread out in neat orderly rows were coffins, hundreds of gray steel coffins. Voices coming from my left broke my momentary trance and, prying my eyes out of their locked gaze, I headed to them. Expecting to find a couple of enlisted men trying to look busy behind a counter, I barged right into a brightly lit morgue, with dead men all around. Abruptly I turned around and walked out back into the warehouse gloom. What a trade-off, dead people or coffins.
Taking a deep breath, I steeled my 20-yearold frame and walked back into the morgue, where a captain in a bloody apron asked if he could help me. He read the paperwork I handed him, which explained that I was there to be the military escort for Sergeant John E. Nelson, C Company, 2nd Battalion, 22nd Infantry, 25th Division, killed in action on April 13, 1968. If he read the look on my face, he would know that the Oakland Army Base morgue in California was absolutely the last place in the world I wanted to be.
Two days before, I was just a private first class in Huntsville, Ala., waiting to go to Instructors School at Redstone Arsenal so I could become a teacher—at the Army School I had graduated from a few weeks earlier. With the Vietnam War raging, I jumped at the offer to be trained as an instructor. So while all my fellow classmates were being shipped off to Vietnam, I stayed put at Redstone. Since the training did not start right away, in the interim I had to do something, so I was made permanent Charge of Quarters (CQ) for my training company. It was good duty. I would stay up all night answering phones and checking the company area. The normal shift was 12 hours on, then 36 hours off. One morning, after being on duty all night, the company clerk woke me up and told me the first sergeant wanted to see me. I had been awakened a couple of times already that morning about trivial matters, so when I headed to the orderly room I was not in a good mood.
“Phone call for you,” the first sergeant said. Who the heck is calling me, I thought.
“Pfc McCormick here,” I barked into the phone.
“John’s been killed,” I heard my father say. He had no details about what happened. The whole world seemed to close in on me. I felt my insides heave and my mouth went dry as cotton. I hung up the phone and watched myself move in slow motion back to my bunk. All I could think about was John. The last time I saw him…the night before he left for Vietnam, December 15, 1967.
Later that day, I learned that John’s family had requested me to be his military escort. My family lived across the street from the Nelsons. John and I went to junior high and high school together. We were best friends.
I left the next day. Unlike in other circumstances, it is amazing how fast the Army can move. My orders were already cut, and my travel voucher done. Because of my relationship with the family, the commanding officer had granted me nine days leave. I had to rush back to the barracks, put on my uniform, grab my bag and get back to the brigade headquarters building, where a car was waiting to take me to the airport. For a lowly private first class to get this kind of treatment was pretty amazing, illustrating the seriousness with which the Army treats this sort of duty.
The only hitch in the trip came at the Los Angeles airport when Pacific Southwest Airlines refused to honor my travel voucher, even after I explained to them what I was doing and why. I vowed not to fly that airline for years afterward. United Airlines had no problem with my voucher, so I flew on to Oakland and found my way to the Sixth Army Escort Detachment. I had the option of staying in the barracks or sharing a room in the guesthouse for $1.75 a night. I shared a room with another GI who was there to escort his brother, who had drowned in Vietnam.
In the day I was there, I received training in the duties of a military escort—how to act, what not to say—and was schooled on how to behave as the official representative of the U.S. Army. The survivor assistance officer is the one who actually coordinated with the funeral director, and was responsible for the honor guard, bugler and firing detail. I was there strictly to be “military escort of a deceased soldier.”
After this familiarization training, we received our orders. Every GI who dies in a combat zone is provided an escort, either someone like me who is chosen by the soldier’s family or by an appointed escort from the Escort Detachment. While the orders were given out, I felt overshadowed by many of the escorts, mostly NCOs with Combat Infantry Badges and rows of ribbons, such as Bronze Star Medals with V Devices and the like. Sensitized by my own grief, a remark made by one of the permanent escorts struck me as callous and has never left me: “I hope I get one close to home.” But then, if you deal with death all the time, I guess the desire of getting an assignment taking you close to home would not be so unreasonable.
When my name was called, I received my orders and was given a ride to Building Number 4, where I was to pick up my friend. There in the morgue, the blood-smeared captain had me sign some papers, but I honestly do not remember. From Oakland Army Base, John and I rode by ambulance to our hometown, Sacramento. Consumed in thought, I recall little about the ride.
That evening there was a viewing for family and close friends. John’s uncle insisted that the casket be opened to “make sure everything was in order.” I helped open the lid and seeing John lying there, I remember thinking how long his hair was: No chance for haircuts out in the bush. Everything seemed in order, until John’s sister realized that the glove on John’s left hand was empty. She let out a loud wailing scream and then started sobbing uncontrollably. It was then that it hit me for the first time that John’s death was not fast, nor painless—it was slow and ugly. I later learned that he was also missing his left leg. Surrounded by men fighting desperately to save themselves, and to find a way to have him medevaced, John had died a slow, painful death.
To this day, I have always wondered what miserable patch of nothing John died for. I have longed to see it, to push the dirt around with the toe of my boot, and think of times lost.
The next day began with a funeral procession to the Mount Vernon Memorial Park, where the most significant part of my duties as military escort would take place: presenting the flag to John’s mother. I was really worried that I was not going to be able to perform this task. I feared screwing up probably the most important thing I had ever done. When the procession turned into the cemetery, I could see the rows of chairs, the tent over the burial site, the honor guard already there. I am sure I must have coordinated the whole thing with the survivor assistance officer who was in charge of the honor guard—where I would stand, where they would present the flag to me—but my mind is a complete blank on those details. I cannot even remember if I stood up during the service or sat down, but I think I must have stood off to the side somewhere.
As the service came to a close and my part in the ceremony drew near, I grew increasingly nervous. When the honor guard began folding the flag over the casket, I readied myself for the task ahead. The folded flag was presented to me, I did an about-face and walked over to Mrs. Nelson. “This flag is offered by a grateful nation in memory of faithful service,” I said, struggling to keep my emotions in check. After saluting, I resumed my position. Everyone was in tears including me. Mrs. Nelson gave me a note thanking me for being there for John, saying that what I did showed the true definition of friendship. In the note was $10 for me to spend on post.
For years I struggled with “survivors guilt.” Why am I alive and not John? I finally concluded that whatever it is, there must be a reason, and I left it at that. I know if the situation had been reversed, John would have done the same for me.
In a real life postscript, several months later I was back at Redstone Arsenal. My name was called at mail call, which usually meant a letter from home, but not this time. It was the last letter I had written to John, months before. It had languished somewhere, probably in Vietnam, before wending its way back to me. Stamped on the envelope was the jarring proclamation: “Confirmed Deceased.” It seems a harsh, uncaring epitaph for a young life lost. I couldn’t open the letter, but kept it with me, until somehow it was lost during my many transfers in the Army.
I do not know exactly what I wrote to John in that last letter, but most likely I told him about being asked to be an instructor, and how it might keep me out of Vietnam, and something about duty at Redstone Arsenal. I never did go to the school, and ended up in Vietnam six months later. I’m sure if he had read my letter, he would have chuckled about me complaining about inspections, spit shining boots, wearing starched fatigues, about how Huntsville was closed on Sundays. Sitting in the mud and rain, with death as a constant companion, he would have loved to be where I was.
Long after that funereal day in April 1968, as far as I’m concerned, it is still my duty to look after John. I continue to write letters to him, even today. It may have been more than 40 years ago, but that does not mean our friendship has faded.
William McCormick served with the 174th Ordnance Detachment at Cam Ranh Bay from September 1968 until September 1969. After leaving the Army in 1970, he earned a degree in U.S. history and has worked for the state of California for the last 21 years.
Originally published in the October 2009 issue of Vietnam Magazine. To subscribe, click here.