Burial of a Fellow Aviator

In 1967 I went to basic training at Ft. Polk, Louisiana. After completing that difficult training, I went to Ft. Wolters, Texas, for flight school. I thought we would go right to flying, but that was not the case. We spent a month in what they called pre-flight. This month was filled with classes to help us become officers along with stress to see if we could take it. Every day our areas were inspected and we were inspected and the least little flaw brought many demerits. Our TAC officer was Mr. Newman. He was especially hard on the candidates. We lived in wood barracks made to house the soldiers training for WWII. The doors were left open during the day and dust and dirt and insects came in.

One evening we returned to find that that Mr. Newman had found a dead fly in one of the guy's areas. With grease pencil he had circled where the dead fly lay and had left a note. We were to arrange for proper burial of a "fellow aviator" and "it better be good". We had already learned that when we were told to do something and thatit better be good, that it better be extra good. So we got a matchbox and lined it with a little piece of cloth, and put the fellow aviator in the box, and tied six long strings to the box. Then a 6 foot hole was dug to bury this fellow aviator. At the proper time, Mr. Newman was present to witness the burial service. We had a 7 gun salute and 6 pallbearers holding on to the strings carrying the fellow aviator to his grave. There was a Jewish candidate among us by the name of Leach. He performed the service. It was in Hebrew and he spoke some things and kind of sang some things and conducted a great service that none of the rest of us understood. Then we proceeded to bury the fly.

After we had completed the burial, Mr. Newman asked if that aviator was buried looking skyward. He said an aviator should always be buried looking up at the sky. He wanted to insure that this aviator had been properly buried. So we were to dig him up so he could see. We started to dig up the fly. The first 5 feet went pretty quickly as we used shovels. But about the last foot we thought we should go very carefully so we did not damage the coffin nor lose this fellow aviator. We dug by hand the last foot and we were successful in finding the aviator. We showed Mr. Newman that he had been buried on his back and was looking skyward. Being satisfied with this, Mr. Newman said that we should bury the fly again. We proceeded to buy the fly for the second time.

If you ever bury an aviator, I recommend that you insure that he is buried looking skyward so you don't have to dig him up and bury him again. Doing a job right the first time is always a time savings! Doing things that are worthwhile are the things we should spend our time on!