The honor guard of local soldiers stood tall in immaculately pressed dress blues, and they carried the coffin to a waiting car to take it away. Somewhere another man in another neatly pressed uniform was delivering the news to a family. Before he rose to become the highest-ranking non-commissioned officer in the Army Mortuary Corps, Rivero had served his time ruining backyard barbeques and birthday parties as a messenger of death. “It’s pretty upsetting to see a family fall apart in front of you,” Rivero remembered. “There’s nothing you can do but read them the official news.”
A couple of days after the ceremony at Ramstein last year, I sat in front of Rivera’s desk speaking with him about his job. Even then he was gearing up for an expected infusion from Iraq. The sprawling complex of military bases known collectively as “K-Town” or Kaiserlautern, Germany also contains Landstuhl Regional medical center and a morgue which serves as the central processessing center for dead bodies in the Western hemisphere. Even back then, the morgue was almost full. After dipping to little more than 100 deaths per year after the United States began drawing down its troops in Europe in the mid- to late-1990s, Rivero’s staff saw 255 bodies in the fiscal year that ended before the Iraq war started. The dead ranged from those killed in training accidents to old vets living in Europe to a growing sector: those who perished on the battlefield. Already, 72 bodies had passed through the building between October and that February day. In the back of the morgue, four Black Hawk helicopter pilots killed in a crash in Afghanistan were on the gurneys, their feet sticking out from under white sheets. The victim of a car accident in Qatar was in the autopsy room, his young muscular body torn and broken. “Since 9/11 everything has changed,” Rivera told me. “We’ve actually expanded the mortuary.”
Rivera had plenty of stories to tell, and seemed not the least bit pained to describe some of the gorier details of his job as a mortician. But it was when the burley, square-jawed soldier began discussing the previous day’s ceremony that he took off his glasses, and quietly began to cry. “Everyone gets the same treatment, from a four star general to the lowest private,” Rivero explained, reaching for the words. “Death isn’t by rank. We do our job with reverence and respect.”
Every day for months, we have heard about the mounting death toll: More than 600 soldiers have died in Iraq over the course of a year. We have seen mangled corpses, and bleeding Marines carried to safety by their comrades. Yet until today, the images of flag-draped coffins and the solemn and ceremonial rites with which the military returns its dead, have been off-limits to media photographers, reporters and the American public. The Pentagon claims they are simply following a policy put in place during the Persian Gulf war that aims to protect the sensitivities of military families. But many suspect the real reason is to shield the American public from the tragic costs of war, and a desire to suppress images that might remind the world of Vietnam.
It’s a pity that the freshest images of the America’s fallen consist of blackened bodies being dragged through the street and hung off a downtown bridge in Fallujah. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the Air Force this week released hundreds of flag-draped photographs to thememoryhole.org, a Web site that publishes hard-to-find government information. The repatriation of dead soldiers is among the military’s highest and proudest traditions. It’s wrong that Americans can’t share in it.
