REMAINS NOT SUITABLE FOR VIEWING….

Robert V Barresi
Jul 22, 2017 · 2 min read

It was sometime between June 1967 and June 1968… my first tour in Vietnam. I had just walked down to our hootch, after a night on guard, sitting on top and inside a heavely sand bagged bunker.. “Hey Barresi?” shouted out Mac, my squad leader…stay loaded up, I need a shotgun to drive down to the air base” That meant he needed another armed body in the truck, lucky fuckin me.

So I jumped up on the door of the deuce and got comfortable . “whats up, Mac?”…”I gotta deliver this missile part to the air base to get flown over to Okinawa”…”AH, then we can grab a burger and a coke?” “yeah, goomba, I,ll treat ya, “anything happen overnight on the bunker line?”…”well….3 scorpions tried to bite my finger and a shitload of centipedes slithered over my boots…other than that , only the regular artillery bursts and 50 caliber machine gun bursts from across the bay, . “They were dropping some heavy shit on Charlie last night..I counted over 20 flares….”And other such bullshit floated back and forth between us, Mac was cool, a Sgt. half Italian, from San Fransisco. We got along, talked about food and telling each other about home..me from Brooklyn, he from SF….

Finally we reach the air base depot to ship stuff out. I waited in the truck, while Mac took the box marked SECRET into the building.

The sun was beginning to rise quick, so I got out of the heated up truck and found some shade near the loading area. I lit up a Camel and loosened my jungle shirt..the sun was making heat devils, on the tarmac of the loading area. I was just watching the jets take off and land, going on their missions..some big ass cargo jets landing….Then I noticed a long row of bright silver boxes or whatever..like alot of them…just laying out in the hellish heat of the sun..ripples of heat rising also up from them…as I got closer I got a shiver in the short hairs of my neck…..

There were about a half acre of aluminum caskets, on wooden pallets, lashed together, 2 high and 3 across….6 per wooden pallet…..”WOW’ I thought..they must be getting ready for some heavy shit to be coming..getting all these caskets ready to get filled…so I kept walking, towards them, like I was being drawn by a magnet..then it finally hit me……. I saw that each casket had a tag attached into the side of each one…the name of the soldier, the name of the mortuary or funeral home..and a sentence..REMAINS NOT SUITABLE FOR VIEWING……………………

)