Burial at Sea

| May 20, 2011

No, not OBL… The real deal.

In solemn ritual, sailors commit fallen to the deep

In the middle of a busy day training off the Virginia coast, about two dozen sailors stop what they’re doing, change into their dress whites and gather in the well deck – a cavernous space at the rear of their ship that opens to the sea and the sunlit sky.

Five small metal containers sit on a table, holding the ashes of four men and a woman. The sailors know nothing about them except their name and rank. They’ve gathered in response to a simple command: “All hands, bury the dead.”

I’ve never heard that call over the 1MC; I’ve heard “General Quarters, General Quarters, THIS IS NO DRILL!” and other calls, but “All hands, bury the dead.” gives me cold chills.

Seven sailors raised their rifles at Harper’s command, then fired three shots. The shells clattered to the steel deck.

Through it all, Yee, Meier and the chaplain held their salutes. Taps sounded over two loudspeakers. After the last note played, the ship’s second-in-command, Lt. Cmdr. Shawn Bohrer, said, “This concludes the committal of SHC Marion Tisdom. At ease.”

For all its ceremony, the service took no more than about 10 minutes.

BZ

Category: Politics

4 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
AW1 Tim

Fair Winds, and Following Seas, shipmates. Stand easy, we have the watch.

Blanka

It sounds beautiful to me… simply singing, the day is done.

Doc Bailey

I often wonder why the Navy doesn’t still do that. There are probably a million americans burried all around the world, in places that are perhaps difficult to get to, like North Africa, and in staggering numbers (at places like the Argonne, Normandy, Peliliu, the Philippians, North of the 38th, Vietnam, etc) I understand why people want bodies, but lets face it a lot of those bodies are not ones you can have an open casket on anyway. I think it is more solemn when your shipmates do it, and not complete strangers, so I think the navy should re-institute it, but make it optional.

Blanka

One ship sails East,
And another West,
By the self-same winds that blow,
Tis the set of the sails
And not the gales,
That tells the way we go.

Like the winds of the sea
Are the waves of time,
As we journey along through life,
Tis the set of the soul,
That determines the goal,
And not the calm or the strife.

(I’m stuck on the sentiment of this article like white on rice… sorry…)