Army Sergeant's widow told " no one wanted my husband" before landfill toss

The pubic image of how this nation's fallen are treated has been one of dignity and honor. In the movie Taking Chance, Kevin Bacon escorted the remains of a fallen Marine, never leaving his body after he was prepared tenderly for his last journey home. The remains are prepared, uniforms are pressed before dressing and everything is done with dignity.


The right thing to do is followed by the book. Bacon wanted to honor Chance so much so that he refused to take off his uniform with going through the metal detector at the airport. He slept outside one night with the covered casket refusing to leave Chance. Bacon was upgraded to a first class seat when it the purpose of the trip was discovered. Upon landing, the pilot asked all the passengers to wait until the flag draped coffin was removed. No one complained as they watched it vanish from view.

This is what the public thinks is happening all the time. After all, treating the fallen with tenderness after they sacrificed their lives in service to this country, is the least we can do.

With roadside bombs blowing up, there are many times when body parts are blown off, mixed up with other parts from other KIA's. While we'd like to think that there is a whole body in the coffins we see, too often, there are only body parts. The men and women they served with rise above their heartache to find as much of their "brother" or "sister" as possible.

All of this goes on but the pubic never hears about it. Because family members have come forward to tell about a darker secret, we now know our image of dignity has been a delusion.

NJ widow exposes mishandling of troop remains with push for answers about her husband

By Associated Press
Saturday, December 10, 6:55 AM

FRENCHTOWN, N.J. — It took Gari-Lynn Smith more than four years to learn what happened to the final remains of her husband, an Army sergeant killed in Iraq.

The New Jersey widow never thought that knowing would be worse than not, or that her search would lead to the bottom of a landfill.

“I was told no one wanted my husband, so he was cremated with the medical waste and thrown in the trash,” Smith said in an interview with The Associated Press this week from her home.

Her quest to find the truth of what happened to her husband’s remains led to an even more disturbing revelation this week as the Air Force acknowledged it had dumped cremated partial remains of at least 274 troops into a Virginia dump — far more than previously acknowledged.

Her story, first told by The Washington Post, along with information from multiple whistleblowers about other mistreatment of fallen soldiers’ bodies became the catalyst for an investigation that found “gross mismanagement” at the Air Force’s mortuary in Dover, Del. — the first stop on American soil for fallen troops coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

It’s where the body of Sgt. 1st Class Scott R. Smith, a bomb-disposal technician, was flown in July 2006. Smith was killed after he stepped on a pressure plate above a roadside bomb as he worked to clear the area. Several limbs and much of his torso were lost in the explosion, his wife said.

Initially led to believe her husband’s entire body was returned, Gari-Lynn became suspicious after being told she shouldn’t ask to see the body before the closed-casket funeral. Later, she ordered copies of the autopsy and learned there were additional remains located, leading to more questions.

This spring, after years of pestering Air Force officials, she received a letter from the Dover mortuary telling her some of her husband’s body was incinerated and sent to a landfill. It closed: “I hope that this brings you some comfort in your time of loss.”
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