Gunnery Sergeant John laid to rest
A lifetime of war making ends in Honduras the gunny has his last battle
The hotel environment offers a daily opportunity for living some of life and death's most unusual and heart-warming events. This story is about following through when someone has asked of you to carry out an unusual task.
This story took place in San Pedro Sula, Honduras.
I lost a friend, and his wife said he’d asked for me to handle his burial ceremony.
The morning sun wasn’t quite peeking over the countryside from the East, yet already it was light.
The singing Zorzal birds were making their way across the clear, pink haze, dream like, going from one horizon to the other. I stood out on my porch in my second-floor manager’s apartment, looking over the pool below. Even at this early hour, the tropical heat with its humidity was moving in and would dominate until late that evening. The unique croaking sound of a black and richly colored long billed toucan in a coconut tree over the swimming pool grabbed my attention.
I loved this part of the world. San Pedro Sula on the northern coast of Honduras is impossible to characterize, though some have tried, and all have failed. The best one can do is describe a particular moment, or day, maybe even a season. San Pedro Sula is a mixture of industrial growth amongst the still abundant coconut trees and shrouded in oppressive, tropical heat, the northern coast heat. Some said the humidity was, in fact, the Caribbean sweating, which was just an hour north from here.
You can almost hear the rustling of coconut palms and the light surf.
The day had begun like any other. Firecrackers lit up the pre-dawn skies over the central plaza in San Pedro Sula, the massive catholic cathedral that shared a side of the park with the hotel saw fit to shoot off very loud boomers to celebrate the saints. The old cathedral had been under construction for over a hundred years and it still wasn’t complete.
The big cathedrals head man was Father Victor, a friendly sort and much opinionated about how we made the pancakes.
I stopped asking about which saint was being celebrated with the bottle rockets and mortars on any given day, and on all Saturdays, no one seemed to know. Father Victor had no clue! My pet theory was that not even the church knew.
A new day had started in the hotel.
Sandra, my wonderful Honduran secretary, stepped into my office. She was worth her weight in gold. She was also a saint carrying an incredible domestic load besides holding down long days at the hotel. “Señor. I’m sorry I have sad news for you this morning.” She watched for me to raise my head and pay attention.
“Yes, Sandra?” I could tell by her face that it wasn’t the bad news that caused her personal grief. This allowed me to relax a little. “What is it, Sandra?”
“John, your friend the American soldier died last night, Señor. I’m so sorry, sir, I know he was a good friend. You should know that I immediately ordered flowers in your name to be delivered to where they are holding the body.” It was the way she said ‘your friend’, a clear distancing, almost looking away for a second. Yes, John and I got along but to say we were pals would be creating something it wasn’t. Sandra never could stand John. John could never stand Sandra.
There was a love-hate relationship even before I’d started working there. She flat-out refused to accept that obnoxious behavior was to be tolerated. The man well meant advances found no safe haven in Sandra's heart. She turned away as he passed her desk winking and wagging mischievously his full Pancho Villa stash.
John was a career soldier, and had been three tours in Vietnam, specifically combat tours. Much of his career was training green soldiers in the jungles of Panama. He was a green beret and a gunnery sergeant. He was retired and married to a Honduran woman, two kids, and lived off his pension. Never a day passed that John didn’t show up at The Skandia coffee shop for late breakfast. I was a non soldier, and I was opposed to that war.
But we sort of hit it off, as will happen at times when two guys who may have nothing in common run into each other. In fact, we met when he barged past Sandra into my office to complain about the ‘shitty coffee’. He’d assure me I was the only guy who could disagree with him on most things and get away with it, we’d become even closer because of the difference. A guy thing.
On any morning, he’d come bursting into my secretary’s office, which fronted mine, and immediately ordered Sandra to get him and me a coffee. Just the way he did this would get her seething. On more than one occasion, I’d swear I saw smoke coming out of her ears. It was a mutual distaste between those two that resulted from being born and having collided with one another, simple as that.
Smoked non-stop like a chimney. One cigarette after another, all day long. It was this that killed him. His oxygen tank was no longer enough and this morning his wife Gaby found him sprawled on their living room floor, gone.
“His wife Gaby came by, but you were not in your office. She asked me to ask you if you will do John one final favor…” She stopped talking and watched me. Sandra knew I hated surprises. Perhaps I was conditioned to react this way because of my out-of-control union, who picked the absolute worst moments possible to force me for impossible additional benefits.
“Sandra, please get on with it, breathe okay? Also, please get Gaby on the phone as soon as you can for me, so what is the favor?”
“While he was still alive, he spoke of this with Gaby.” Sandra was obviously enjoying herself. She knew I was averse, deeply to being ‘put out’, put into a situation that was both impossible to control and impossible to cancel…
“Sandra, damn it, get on with it. You’re obviously enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“Un poco Señor” she said, just smiling, “Mister John said he wanted you to direct his burial, sir.” She stood her ground and watched my face for any visible pain.
“Oh, that’s fine Sandrita. Call the burial house. What do they call it, you know, for a coffin? I’m guessing Gaby hasn’t done this? Also, get a church lined up. I’ll talk to his friends in the coffee shop to clear up a schedule and things like that.” My mind was already proceeding to the next issue on my very long to-do list for the day. There were those damn aluminum frames that had fallen apart way before their time on the second floor, plus the damn fire inspection people were coming today.
“No, Señor, you don’t understand.” Her show of delight was irritating, and she knew she had to proceed with caution. “You see, Señor, Gaby said that he asked for a military burial and he was insistent you do it. He said you would know what to do. He wants you to ‘administer’ the event, and it needs an American flag and all those things.”
“Uh Sandra, I’ve never once in my life run a burial, damn it!”
“I know you can do this, Señor and Gaby expects it, and it’s for her children, you know…”
Okay, so what else? I looked it up on what then would have been the Google of the day. I think Jarvis. It was around 2002 and there was all the information I needed, even a recommended prayer for those who die in battle. That John had asked this of me was a huge honor. Something completely unexpected and I wanted to do the best damn job possible for a man who’d done far more for his country than anyone I’d ever known. Was I up to it?
I called the US embassy for advice, how to proceed, were they able and willing to do anything for a deceased warrior. No, they weren’t.
I asked Father Viktor to help me with the proceedings. I figured we could do it at his church next door. He said the only church free was The Cloistered Mary on the other side of town and warned me he was an asshole. Father Viktor chuckled as he said: “don’t worry I will set it up for you okay my friend?”
Father Viktor repeated. “Tomas, be warned that the Padre is an asshole. Seriously, and I don’t even need to ask forgiveness to use such language, God knows this is so. I think he doesn’t feel very fondly towards Americans”.
It was all rather informal, as the plans seemed to pile together and quickly took shape. At one point the following morning my office filled with John’s breakfast buddies, all vets, and they gave me an old and worn American flag and told me I needed to drape it over John’s coffin in the church.
The church’s modern architecture reflected the sharp angles and triangular windows with dismally arranged and poorly selected stained glass windows, the abstract style often seen in the ‘new’ catholic church buildings. Seating was on a raised theater slant, rising from a beautiful, non-traditionally appointed altar. Guests were arriving. Some women wiping tears, Gaby and I hugged. It all went rather quickly.
Sandra and several from the hotel staff had come, too. The staff knew John, he’d constantly toss small insults at them but end with a wink and a laugh. Sandra caught my eye and nodded. All is well. Her way to assure me.
The Father, a Spaniard with a pencil-thin mustache whom I’d not met before, conducted the ceremony and at the proper moment asked me to join him at the altar. John lay in an open coffin, the top half open. His thick mustache, still perky and poised, filling out his perpetual sergeant’s scowl as though he was about to launch into how shitty the service was.
The Father did not waste time and seemed in a hurry. After saying some other things mostly unintelligible in that Latinesque affectation which Padres are quite practiced at gestured towards me, did not look into my eyes and asked me to say a few things, just before I started he stunned me with the words “Do not say anything bad…” Something within me bristled… From a bag I pulled Old Glory and the preacher just about went ape shit. By ape shit, I mean the Ol boy did all he could to maintain his fragile composure.
“What do you think you are doing, Mr. Jacobson? This is not allowed, no you cannot…” Mind you, this in front of the now stone silent congregation.
“Relax there Padre, no disrespect here, but it was requested by the family I lay the flag on his coffin and that’s what I am going to do. Not you or anyone else is going to stop me.”
You know how it is sometime when you meet someone and they not only have no interest in you, they in fact have an instant dislike for you? This was such a case. Mutual. I could’ve tied cinder bricks to his ankles and thrown him overboard.
“No, you cannot do this in this church.” The man spoke in broken English now.
“This man fought for you and me just so we could worship freely in a church like this one.” I side stepped him and placed the flag over John’s coffin, at which moment all the vets broke into cheer and applause.
I gave some words and repeated the famous ‘dust to dust ‘ prayer and before long there were few dry eyes left.
At my signal, Sandra stood and approached me at the coffin where we removed the flag and in the traditional form, which we practiced over and over, folded the flag into the classic triangle. After which Sandra and I walked over to Gaby and her children sitting in the front row. She stood and I handed her the flag. She took it gently, we hugged, tears poured, her smile said everything that needed saying.
Slowly but surely, we exited the church and drove slowly to the cemetery for the final proceedings. As I turned around to see the Padre one more time at the church, I had to bite my tongue so that I wouldn’t say something inappropriate like: “Fuck you, pal”.
At the burial site, I had another prayer prepared and asked some of his surprised fellow vets to say words as well, and they opened up and couldn’t stop talking. Watching the men speak of their former companion made me realize just how important it was that I helped out in the burial. Even if my politics varied from some of the participants in this ceremony it was something that needed to be done.
I did it. I’m glad I did.
Just before leaving the cemetery, Gaby hugged me and Sandra again and told me that the ceremony went far beyond what she’d hoped for and that she couldn’t thank us enough.
Gunnery Sergeant John had won his last battle.
