Funeral Detail - 1 September 2006

Published on September 6, 2006 By chiprj In Blogging

Well, when I got back from NTC, I had an email waiting for me to let me know I'd be on funeral detail for September and October. This will be my fourth rotation on the detail. I had a couple of comp days the last week of August scheduled, so I talked to the NCOIC for this rotation and made sure he'd be OK with me missing a practice. This is his first turn on the detail and I told him that I was good to go and could do a funeral whenever he needed. I got one for that Friday.

We had four funerals for the Labor Day weekend with two full honors funerals happening on Friday at about the same time. We had to talk to some of the units on post about providing some extra service members to cover both funerals. We were able to spend a couple of days getting the new people trained up.

We met at 1130 on Friday to draw the rifles. The service wasn't scheduled to start until 1330 and it was in Seaside, so we were a bit early but it made sense to draw rifles the same time as the other team and their funeral was a little earlier than ours. This allowed us to get to the cemetery early and practice a few times, though. I brought along another SSG as my bugler this time because it was his first time on the detail and as bugler he'd have a good opportunity to see the military honors without having a big role.

Around 1300 people started to arrive, so I got the team in position. They first put the rifles down where they planned to fire from and then met me on the side of the road to await the carriage. I met with some of the funeral home personnel and talked with them to make sure I knew the route the carriage would take and where it would stop, as well as verifying that the headstone was indeed where the head of the casket would be (I had a funeral last year where the feet actually were placed at the headstone). When the carriage and family arrived, I was introduced to the widow. I also met her grandson, a Major in the Army.

When the carriage was in place and everything was ready, the firing team leader marched the team down and they served as pall bearers to the grave. This was the first funeral for some of them and I could see they were surprised by the weight of the casket but they managed to get it in place with no problems.

The grave side service was short. As I was introduced the man from the funeral home also warned the crowd that the rifle shots would be loud. I marched to the head of the casket and saluted. The rifle shots sounded great. They were in unison on the shots. The sliding of the bolts to load the next round wasn't so perfect, but that's harder to hear at a distance and many people don't pay attention to it because they are preparing for the next shot.

The team marched back to the casket and folded the flag. Like I said, this was mostly a new crew of Airmen and while we talked about how to do things and practiced a lot, I think the folders got a bit nervous. The folding went well but at the end there was some white showing at two of the corners and a red streak from one of the stripes showed a bit along the edge. They fiddled with the flag a lot before finally giving up and passing it forward. We have ways to deal with flags that don't end up folded perfectly, but holding on to it and fiddling for an extended amount of time is not among them. When the flag got to the team leader, she handed it to me and we were able to fix it a little as she put the spent shell casings into the flag. She then saluted the flag and marched the team back to the rifles.

When I presented the flag, I kneeled down on one knee and gave the flag to the widow. During practice we talked about the presentation and the outgoing NCOIC told us that we were supposed to kneel when presenting the flag. I'd never kneeled before. Mostly, I would just bend over in almost a bow type posture when I presented the flag. But apparently, I was trained wrong two years ago. Learn something new all the time, I guess. So, I kneeled down and presented the flag and then I got back up and saluted the flag one last time. I then marched off to the side and waited for the service to end.

After the service, I asked the man from the funeral home if he thought the widow would let me put the flag in a case and bring it back. This is how we fix flags that don't turn out quite right. We bring the cases to funerals and either ask the family to let us case the flags or leave them with the funeral home personnel to present to the family later. I took the flag back to our van and behind it, we fixed the corners and the streak of red before placing it in the case. I then went back to the family and gave the flag to the Major, who asked me if he could give it to his grandmother this time. He also thanked me for coming out and told me that the team did a good job.

It was about lunch time and the other team had not returned yet to turn in their rifles, so I took the pack of hungry Airmen to Wendy's (their choice) so they could buy lunch. It was a nice treat for them since in addition to being new to funeral detail, they are new to the base, and most of them don't have off post privileges yet. We then returned to base and I released them to enjoy what they had left of the long weekend (they had to do another funeral on Saturday yet) while I waited for the armorer to arrive so I could turn in the rifles.

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Comments

greywar

on Sep 06, 2006

Benn awhile since I have been back on here but nice to catch up you again bro. Good to see that you are still holding it up at the ceremonies.

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