Fallen soldiers are not ‘medical waste’

I just got home from today’s Veterans Day activities. I met some new people and ran into a few old buddies. I paid my respects and said prayers for the fallen. Despite the deep cold, it was a good day all around — until I got home and turned on the news.

As I watched, my face turned shades of anger-induced red and the air around me turned blue with four-letter words.

Cremated body parts of our fallen American servicemen and women were being dumped into landfills? I sat through the news broadcast and then went online and began to dig deeper.

Dover Air Force Base is tasked with processing the remains of our fallen soldiers for identification and preparation for their final journeys home for burial.

But according to CNN, NBC and other news media, they have given the wrong body parts to the wrong grieving families, some body parts have gone missing inside the Air Force’s mortuary facilities and other body parts were cremated and dumped into landfills until 2008. Since 2008, remains have been buried at sea. Apparently, this has been going on for years.

This is how we have treated our fallen soldiers for years? Did they do this to my buddies who died tragically and violently serving this nation? Rage and anger don’t begin to cover what I am feeling.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta wants this to be investigated. The Air Force has said it has disciplined three of its top officials for “gross mismanagement.” This is not good enough. The Secretary of Defense wants more, and so do I. I want heads to roll and careers to end. I am sure every veteran and family member of a fallen soldier, airman, sailor, coast guardsman or Marine feels the same way I do. This is not how we treat those who have given their lives serving this proud nation.

War is a nasty business and those who die during war do so violently. Only the very “lucky” come back intact; most bodies come home in pieces. And often, DNA identification is necessary. That is a very hard fact.

We do this in the hope that if we should die, every effort will be made to return our remains to our families for burial. The mortuary division of the U.S. Air Force at Dover failed to do this.

I’m not naive enough to think they can identify every bit and piece of a dead GI. But we should never let our military service members’ remains end up in a landfill or treat them as merely “medical waste.”

This must never be allowed to happen again. Those responsible must be held accountable through a Uniform Code of Military Justice court-martial. They must leave the service. Our war dead must be treated with the highest respect — every last bit of them recovered, known and unknown must find a final resting place of honor.

Seek out your congressman or senator. Write a letter to the president. Let them know this is unacceptable. Shout it out on the streets.

The fallen deserve better than this. They paid with their very lives. Anything else is simply un-American. They served, as did I. But they gave all to the last breath fighting for our country in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. I will always remember their sacrifices and I hope so will every other freedom-loving American.

Wasilla resident Daniel D. Grota retired from the U.S. Army after more than 21 years of service.