Picking up the pieces

[Charon]

Picking up the pieces

When I was in Iraq there were some soldiers who were burned alive. They were driving a fuel truck and some kind of accident happened that resulted in the truck going up and the two soldiers ended up being burned, their bodies were on fire for hours, from what I know the area was too hot for the bodies to be recovered.

When we took them out of their body bags there wasn't much left of either of them, one was so burned that nothing was left but a charred spinal column and when we/I picked it up for movement (you have to place a person's remains face up and right side up in a transfer case, anything less is shameful) the spine started to crack in two like a piece of burnt wood.

At one point during all of this, some...charred piece, tiny really, fell and hit the morgue room floor and exploded into a little area of ash. I didn't know what to do. Did I go on with work? How could I pick it up and put it back with his remains?! :confused: I needed a dust pan, a gd dust pan to pick up this guy, this person....Time just froze and I just couldn't figure out what to do. Everyone was still working, the smell was...well nothing else smells like it...and people were all panicky and hyped up, jittery, I was always able to focus really well doing morgue work, looking at casualties, I don't know why.

I felt incredibly foolish for being so sensitive as to want to somehow gather up the ash that had hit the floor and attempt to put it back with the remains. There really was no way to do it and people would have looked at me like I was daft or something if I told people (especially those who outranked me) to stop moving and watch their step so I could grab a dust pan and pick this poor guy up. Even then I sure as hell wasn't going to mix his remains up with dirt and sand. I just decided to let it go, I really didn't feel like there was anything I could do. The whole thing happened only in seconds but it felt like I was looking at that and trying to figure out what to do for hours. And that really wasn't the most...f-ed up part of that day in the morgue, I'm not really ready to write about the other stuff.

 

[anthony]

Well done for getting it out of you Charon... not easy stuff to deal with. You did a job that many could not do, including me. I couldn't deal with dead bodies all day, even when I didn't have PTSD. It says a lot about you to begin with for being able to do it... I think about doctors and nurses the same. Pretty damn good people to do the jobs they do.

Honestly, I believe your sensitivity is exactly the right element for morgue work. Because someone is dead doesn't mean we stop caring about them. People need to be sensitive and caring in handling the dead IMHO.

I reckon you had fair call actually to be concerned about such a thing. Its not like a piece of sandwich hit the floor, but a piece of a person. Showed a lot of respect if you ask me mate. Good on ya I say. More morticians need to have respect for the dead from some I have met.

 

[Jimmy1]

Well done mate, and can I say in a way I know how you feel.

Even though I was in communications, the Australian Embassy was right near the major evacuation point for the wounded and dead in the IZ (Baghdad).

Our check point was shared with the US guys and we constantly had vehicles coming through with burnt, blown up and dead guys from out in the red zone.

The one thing which I am sure every vet will understand is that you will never ever forget the smell of burning flesh.

We even had an Abrhams trying to drive straight through the check point as there were guys screaming inside. They were so protective of their mates they even pointed their own weapons at us to try and urge us to let them through.
We were only doing our job.

I will never forget their sacrifice.

 

[BioHazard]

Well Done, Charon! We all have things inside that we can't get rid of, and you've just shared something that would probably haunt you otherwise. It takes a lot to tell someone you have a rapport with about traumatic experiences, so I can't imagine how hard it is to tell total strangers about it. I applaud your courage!