USA TODAY International Edition
The final trip home: ‘ You don’t forget’
At the Dover Air Force Base military mortuary, America’s war dead are met by ordinary people who day by day do the unimaginable
DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Delaware – There is no room for mistakes here.
The flag- draped silver case with a soldier’s body must be carried slowly down the ramp of a U. S. Air Force cargo plane. No tilting. No slipping. The final uniform jacket worn to the grave must be wrinkle- free, the pants’ creases razor- sharp, with all rank insignias, stripes and tiny oak leaf clusters perfectly placed. And for the surviving families who come in tears, there must be bowls of chocolates and mints – and even a refrigerator full of pizza and meatloaf in a hotel- like compound. Nothing can be left out or guessed at. Such is the unspoken commitment of the soldiers – and some civilians, too –
who labor in a nondescript building at this Air Force base in the Delaware flatlands that has become the unlikely bridge to America’s endless wars.
Officially, it’s called Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations unit. Unofficially, it’s where America tries to bring some comfort to a moment that is exceedingly uncomfortable – when the bodies of those lost in overseas combat zones are brought home.
Recently, NorthJersey. com and the USA TODAY Network were granted exclusive access to the behind- the- scenes workings of the mortuary unit. What emerged was not so much a story of death but a tale of ordinary people struggling to preserve some small flicker of humanity amid the carnage of war.
Their assignment, in one of the U. S. military’s most sensitive and gruesome units, could call on them to search for the right brigade patch for a final uniform that a soldier will wear. It could also mean looking into the eyes of a young wife who lost her husband in Iraq or Afghanistan and saying, “It’s OK not to be OK.” In recent years, it has also meant dealing with an alarming increase in suicides.
“We do the behind- the- scenes stuff that nobody wants to think about,” said U. S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Nicole McMinamin, one of several soldiers who assemble uniforms for the dead at the mortuary unit.
What’s striking about the process is that, like war itself, there is no established schedule. A soldier dies in a faraway place. But bringing a body home may take a few days – or longer.
And then, it could be well after midnight when a hulking Air Force cargo plane glides to a stop on the Dover tarmac, sometimes to be greeted by a highranking government official such as President Donald Trump, a row of Pentagon generals and a grieving family.
No matter. The mortuary unit is on constant alert to receive a body.
Sad and solemn duty
In an interview, the unit’s commander, Air Force Col. Dawn Lancaster, became so emotional as she described the monumental weight of the tasks facing her cadre of several dozen Army and Air Force members that she started to cry.
“I’ve done a lot of cases,” said Lancaster, 26, an Air Force veteran who has deployed overseas six times and escorted hundreds of soldiers’ remains from the Dover tarmac. “I remember them all. You don’t forget.”
Indeed, remembering seems part of the DNA here.
You walk into the sun- washed main hall and atrium of the unit’s headquarters, past a marble wall with the words “Dignity, Honor and Respect” engraved in gold and come face to face with a memorial that features the names of some of America’s most shocking catastrophes that have produced bodies for the unit to handle for the past half- century. There are references to the Marine Barracks bombing in Beirut in 1983, the Black Hawk Down incident in Somalia in 1993, the space shuttle disasters, the mass shooting at Fort Hood.
And on and on.
For the past two decades, however, most of the casualties have come from Iraq and Afghanistan – what has become known as America’s longest and perhaps endless wars. More than 6,800 U. S. military personnel and American civilians assigned to combat jobs have perished in Iraq and Afghanistan since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In just the past decade, as those conflicts were supposedly winding down, the remains of 2,102 Americans who died in the various war zones have come through Dover – 46 so far this year.
On a wall in the corner hangs a framed Arizona Cardinals football jersey worn by Pat Tillman before he gave up his promising career in the NFL in 2002 to enlist in the Army.
Tillman, who became an elite Army Ranger, was killed in Afghanistan in 2004. His body returned to America through Dover.
“It doesn’t get easier,” Lancaster said. “It’s one thing when you are dealing with deaths that are of a hostile nature. That’s what we do in the military – and we understand that. ... What’s difficult now, unfortunately, is dealing with the suicide problem. Those are hard to understand and wishing you could have done something.”
Lancaster should know.
Two weeks before she spoke to NorthJersey. com, she revealed to her staff that she had attempted suicide more than two decades before as a newly minted second lieutenant.
Lancaster was just 24 and had graduated only a year earlier from the Air Force Academy. But, she “screwed up” on her first assignment – so badly that her boss transferred her. Thinking her Air Force career was over, she washed down a bottle of sleeping pills with a bottle of tequila.
But she telephoned a friend. And that friend, she said, saved her.
Lancaster told her staff the story as a way of calming what she noticed was a growing concern about the growing number of military deaths by suicide they have handled – six in just one month earlier this year. Her message was simple: Almost anyone, even the strongest and most confident people, might be capable of suicide.
“No matter how or where that member died, they chose to serve and defend our nation,” she said. “They stood up and said, ‘ I volunteer.’
“If it’s suicide,” she said, “who knows what the wounds are that they are carrying?”
Delicate, painful protocols
Once a soldier’s remains arrive, military medical examiners have to make a major decision: Can the soldier’s body be seen by family members in a coffin? Sometimes, because of the horrific nature of warfare, a soldier’s body might be so mutilated or dismembered that it is classified as “unviewable.”
That painful news has to be delivered to the soldier’s family by the unit.
“Most of the families are in shock,” said Major Darren Schwartz, 52, an Army National Guard chaplain from Montana who is assigned to the Dover unit for 2019.
“Sometimes they’re lost,” said Schwartz, a Southern Baptist minister who works in civilian life as a hospital chaplain in Kalispell, Montana. “Sometimes they’re angry. They’re angry at the Army. Sometimes it can be hard to gauge all of that. There aren’t always a lot of great words.”
The person behind the uniform
Regardless of what state a soldier’s body is in, the unit “builds” a uniform for burial in a room that seems more akin to a tailor’s shop.
Near a back wall, in front of four mannequins wearing Army, Marine, Navy and Air Force uniforms, racks of pants, jackets and shirts hang in rows. And for families who don’t want a uniform, there are black civilian suits.
“We will honor whatever the family wishes,” said Air Force Master Sgt. Naomi Bouska, 34, of Chaska, Minn. “If the family wishes them to buried in their favorite sports jersey and jeans, we will do that.”
Bouska, who majored in theater at the University of Wisconsin, said she is often deeply moved by the task of pulling together a soldier’s burial uniform.
Bouska tries to read up on each soldier’s history – where they went to school, what military specialty they might have had, what medals they were awarded and, if possible, how they died.
“It paints a picture,” she said. “It goes back to the history of the individual. You get to honor the legacy of a fallen hero. They’ve given everything. I can give something back to them and to the families.”
McMinamin, Bouska’s compatriot in the “uniform shop,” specializes in “building the ribbon rack” – the rows of medals that are placed on the left chest of every soldier’s uniform, above the heart. McMinamin, 38, of Plymouth, Mass., said she was drawn to the military’s mortuary unit after working several years as a hospice nurse.
“I get attached to people,” she said. “So when I was taking care of a specific individual for a couple of years in hospice, after she passed away I wanted to continue to help the families, but in a different way.”
If a soldier’s body is severely mutilated, the remains are wrapped in a sheet and then in a wool Army blanket. The uniform assembled by Bouska and McMinamin is then placed atop the remains in a casket.
Such work is understandably draining. The soldiers say they often lean on one another for comfort. Sometimes the unit members seek out Schwartz for some of the comfort and insight he passes to the families of soldiers.
But there is no easy prescription, no standard set of instructions to follow. Each day can bring another tragic tale.
“This changes you,” Schwartz said. “The challenge is to make sure it changes you for the better.”