Sacred Duty by Tom Cotton

Author:Tom Cotton
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, pdf
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-03-29T04:00:00+00:00

The Rituals of Arlington

These rituals begin not in the verdant hills of Arlington, but in the Memorial Affairs Section’s small office at One Legion’s headquarters on Jackson Avenue in Fort Myer. Captain Greg Rhodes leads the seven-soldier section. “We build redundancy into every step of funeral planning,” he explained, “because these are no-fail missions. It has to be perfect.” The redundancy of the planning process, far from needless Army bureaucracy, is just another example of The Old Guard’s devotion to our nation’s fallen and their families.

“We have direct access to the ANC database, so we use that to plan and deconflict missions a couple weeks out,” Cpt. Rhodes continued. “Most days are straightforward, but a big funeral or a sensitive one takes some extra work.” When 1st Battalion performs a funeral for a senior official, as it did for former Secretary of the Army Togo West in April 2018, for instance, it has to put most of its soldiers in the cemetery—not just two companies as usual. Likewise, a soldier killed in action is entitled to an expedited full-honor funeral within two weeks of death, which can require a third caisson section. “We can support those funerals,” Cpt. Rhodes said, “but the companies need as much advance notice as possible.”

The Memorial Affairs Section produces two mission orders that drive the funeral-planning process. Each Tuesday, the section issues five days’ worth of draft funeral orders for the following week. The “MA Draft,” as it is known, is a single page that includes every detail for every Army funeral: time, place, honors to be rendered, religion, and the decedent’s rank, first initial, and last name. But the MA Draft is only provisional and my work in Arlington revolved around the MA Final, which I carried in my ceremonial cap every time I entered Arlington for funerals, as leaders do today. I depended on it to be flawless.

It falls to the Memorial Affairs Section to be sure the MA Final is perfect. “We build a whole new MA Final off the ANC database—we don’t just make changes to the Drafts. It’s just another redundancy to avoid errors,” Cpt. Rhodes said. His section issues the MA Final in early afternoon the day before the funerals to the units responsible for them: the primary and backup funeral companies, Caisson, the Salute Battery, and the 529th’s Transportation Platoon, which drives the soldiers into the cemetery on buses. These units also send a representative to the daily clearing meeting at 1500.

The clearing meeting is essential for coordinating the next day’s funerals. Timelines are validated and funerals are assigned to the primary or backup company. The meeting also covers special circumstances such as a double interment of a veteran and spouse or a funeral in what is known as “Hollywood,” the older sections of the cemetery near the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the JFK Gravesite. While funerals are uncommon there, when they occur the clip-clop of the caisson’s horses and the clicking of soldiers’ steel shoes attract tourists like flies to honey.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.