Folks, there are very good reasons why a body isn't shown to loved ones.

[Sam McGee]

67. Thank you . . . here's more

Most of us witness death as a fairly clean event . . . Grandmother is lying in the bed, surrounded by her children and grandchildren, she heaves one last sigh and is gone. Even in the case of someone who dies in surgery, from a fall, thrown from a horse, in an automobile accident -- usually the funeral home can reconstruct the face and body enough so they look normal.

Not so with deaths in combat. Military weapons are intended to kill and destroy. I put a lot of kids in body bags in Vietnam. Many of what went into the body bag was what we could find -- body from the waist down; a few pieces - odd leg, arm, head, hand; entire body with head missing except for lower jaw.

And, as the OP stated, there's decomposition. If we don't find you within a few hours, the maggots and animals start on you . . . and it's ugly.

The widow will have a full-time survivor's assistance officer. She also will receive a visit from a mortuary services officer who will have with him/her the form on which the condition of the body is described. That will be a tough visit but, we hope, she will then understand why the closed casket. I hope the Congresswoman is with her.

I was a platoon leader in Vietnam for eight months before being medevvaced back to the States with my own wounds. Ten of my troops were killed in that eight months, three of those were mutilated beyond recognition. I promised all ten and myself I would visit every family when I got out of the hospital. I did it . . . took over a year, I went all over the States at my expense to visit families. They appreciated it. If you've never been to war, you can't understand.


"War is at best barbarism. . . . Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell."
William T. Sherman