"The mortuary was bustling around the clock, seven days a week. We were so far over capacity that we threw food away to make more cooler space.
There were remains all over the place. Bodies would come into the mortuary in pieces sometimes, burnt, bloated from days in the hot sun of a rice paddy or covered in maggots.
You learned to breathe a certain way. The odors were difficult to deal with sometimes.
After bringing the remains into the facility, we took the clothing off. We would then look for identifying marks like scars, birthmarks or tattoos.
We checked the boots and belts to see if their name had been written inside.
Dog tags were the worst thing you could use. Guys would trade them or give them to their buddies. Then we would take fingerprints and make a dental chart.
Sometimes, it was like a puzzle trying to put bone fragments together. It got to be a lot more gruesome than I thought it would be.
There was a soldier whose skin was peeling off. To make the ID, I had no choice but to put his skin on my own hand to take a fingerprint.
We tried to shut down our emotions. However, we still had to have respect for the grim task at hand.
We'd go through the personal effects. We would take out anything that might cast a negative light on the deceased or be hurtful to the family like naked pictures or letters with cursing or those from a mistress.
This meant reading all the letters from home and seeing photographs of babies that the deceased would never meet.
We treated the remains of the soldiers that were killed with respect. It was sad but you had to do the job right. There was no better way to honor the fallen then to return them back to their home." #vietnamwar #reality #zerofoxtrot #stayzero