The messengers
Military service casualty officers help families cope with loved ones' deaths
by
Alison Walker-Baird
News-Post Staff
FREDERICK - Forty years after her son died in a Vietnam War helicopter crash, an ailing mother finally will bury her baby, a young Marine.
Hattie Johnson, who heads the U.S. Marine Corps repatriation office in Quantico, Va., flew to the mother's Bakersfield, Calif., home in early June. The remains of the woman's son, Cpl. Jim Moshier, had been positively identified.
Johnson is among the military's roughly 40 service casualty officers who contact and provide support to families of missing service members from past wars.
"To look at a mother who's 89 years old and has waited so long for this, just to hear her talk is indescribable," Johnson said. "We talk to some families who hope they can just hold out long enough."
The remains of nearly 88,000 troops, from World War II and the conflicts that followed, are waiting to be recovered and identified. Identifications trickle in at a rate of about 100 each year.
Service casualty officers also help families waiting for a positive identification to navigate the web of agencies involved in finding and bringing home service members left behind.
"Our focus is on helping families work through their grief by bringing closure, by bringing home their loved one," said Jim Russell, who heads the Air Force's casualty office. "We may not always be able to get closure, but it won't be for lack of trying."
Survivors waiting for answers
Though many service members' closest relatives die before burying their loved ones, nieces or nephews - even grandchildren - take over the quest.
The military's Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office in Washington organizes annual conferences and monthly updates in cities throughout the country to provide information for surviving relatives.
The Air Force's Russell said his staff encounters strong emotions while working face-to-face with families.
Some families - offering hugs - thank Russell and other officers for the government's work gathering information and sometimes bringing home remains.
Others shake their fingers in officials' faces, angry at the government for not bringing home the body of their parent, spouse, sibling or child, Russell said.
"You have to be emotionally centered to understand that they are grieving," he said. "Some show their grief with anger, some deal with their grief with thanks. You have to stay on an even keel and stay focused on the mission."
The DPMO makes case summaries available to families. The documents list everything known about the circumstances surrounding a death, as well as the status of investigations into locating remains.
DPMO officials compile case summaries for families who have RSVP'd for the annual update meetings, but survivors may request this information through their service casualty office, said U.S. Air Force 1st Lt. Mary Olsen, a DPMO spokeswoman.
Case summaries range from the detailed and personalized to the generic.
The amount of information often is dictated by the war in which the person served, she said. Poor record-keeping and the sheer volume of unaccounted-for troops from World War II means these case summaries may be harder to complete than those for later wars.
The office is nearly always able to provide some information, such as background on the battle in which the service member was known to have been lost, she said.
Coming home
Once the military's Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, or JPAC, has positively identified the remains of previously unaccounted-for personnel, service casualty officers contact next-of-kin.
After calling relatives, a casualty officer, with a member of the military service and other officials, travels to the family's home to make funeral arrangements.
Family members often cannot believe the service member's remains will be returned to them, at long last.
"Especially for mothers, they tell me, 'I've lived for this day. I never thought it would happen, but I prayed a lot,'" the Marine Corps' Johnson said.
In often emotionally charged visits, families are invited to pore over documentation of the entire recovery and identification process. Military officials provide written reports on the efforts that led to the remains being located and excavated, as well as dental and DNA analysis and photographs taken at the recovery site.
During these visits, Johnson said, relatives enjoy showing photographs and telling stories of their Marine - the son, brother, husband or father whose life they cherished but whose death was a mystery.
When Johnson visited Moshier's family in Bakersfield, relatives said the Marine's mother has been in such poor health they thought her death was imminent. The family believes she stayed alive only in hopes she might see her son's remains brought home.
In May 2005, the military recovered a piece of Moshier's right leg bone. The discovery came nearly 38 years after enemy machine guns took down the Sea Knight in which Moshier and 10 others were riding on June 11, 1967.
During the late 1970s, a black market human remains trader uncovered remains from a Vietnam crash site. The Vietnamese government seized the remains in 1996 and buried them in a security compound in Quang Tri Province, South Vietnam.
Someone carefully wrapped the remains in plastic, placed them in a terra cotta box and buried them in a compound gravesite. Flowers dotted the ground above.
U.S. officials were finally permitted to excavate the remains in 2005 and traced them to two Marines: Moshier and U.S. Marine Corps Pfc. James E. Widener, of Churchville, N.Y.
Moshier's family will bury him July 18. Widener was buried in November in Arlington National Cemetery.
With the same prestige and attention afforded casualties of today's wars, military officials at JPAC's headquarters in Hawaii carefully prepare a full-sized casket to hold the remains, no matter how small - even for a single tooth.
"With the full-length casket it gets to look like anyone else who's coming home," Johnson said.
Before the casket is closed and an American flag is draped over top, officials lay out a pressed full-dress uniform, attaching appropriate medals and tucking the remains inside.
A representative from the service member's military branch escorts the casket to the funeral home for services or to a cemetery for burial.
The fallen are buried with full military honors. The flag that has decorated the casket is folded and presented to the family, offering the same respect to these troops, whose remains have been missing for decades, as is given those who are returned to their families within days.
