Back from the War

A light drizzle fell all morning.

In the afternoon, people gathered at the funeral home in South St. Louis. It was much like any other American funeral parlor, with stippled walls and dark-painted woodwork, and the sick-sweet smell of wreaths and flowers. There, in a steel casket, the flag draped over, lay the body of Otto J. Weiner Jr., private in the Marines, killed in action on an unnamed Pacific island. American Legionnaires stood guard. A Lutheran pastor spoke the eulogy, said the prayer.

The body in the steel casket had come 12,000 miles. On that unnamed island where he was killed, Private Weiner had been a favorite of the native chief. When he died, the natives held a tribal ceremony. They wove a tapestry of bark and sent it along for his parents.

At the cemetery, six bareheaded youths--Private Weiner was only 18--carried the casket to a green hill among the sycamores. Nine solemn-faced Marines stood guard. When the body was lowered into the damp, fresh-dug grave, they fired three volleys into the leaden sky. Lots of people wept.

This was the first burial in home soil of an American killed in action in World War II.

Next morning, again in South St. Louis, the same scene was repeated. Over the body of Jerome U. Schmitt, 19, private in the Marines, who died of wounds on a Pacific battlefront, a Roman Catholic priest intoned the Requiem Mass. Out in a suburban cemetery, three volleys echoed again.

There will be no more U.S. funerals of soldiers killed in action abroad. The bodies of Private Schmitt and Private Weiner came all the thousands of miles home through an error. These two that were first will be the last, until the war is done.

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