Always Well Remembered

SYLMAR —  Because an army travels on its stomach, Dick Hitz has filled the blue picnic cooler with Diet Coke and Diet 7-Up, and placed it on the floor at the back of the troop transport. On the rear seat, he has set a giant jar of cashews.

And because soldiers’ fates are always assumed to depend on the state of their weapons, Hitz has loaded seven World War II-vintage M-1 rifles with three rounds apiece, and lined them up for inspection across the backs of two adjoining seats.

The clock ticks toward 0900, H-hour.

The All Veterans Burial Squad assembles for another mission.

This will be Burial No. 223 since last Dec. 1, when the squad’s accounting year began. Since its founding in 1975, the squad has attended the exits of an estimated 5,000 fellow military veterans. It asks a $30 donation, but has never turned down a request.

“As long as you were in the service for 90 days and had an honorable discharge, we’ll be there to assist you on your way, wherever you’re going,” says the 68-year-old Hitz, the retired Lockheed welder who captains the squad.

For the mission on this sweltering morning, Hitz has marshaled eight other personnel in a contractor’s parking lot near VFW Valley View Post 6213 in Sylmar.

Present and accounted for are Jim Nixon, 80, Lockheed inspector, retired; Jim Tukesbrey, 75, letter carrier, retired; Al Lauer, 75, over-the-road trucker, retired; Bob Erickson, 73, carpenter, retired; Bob Acebo, 72, termite inspector, retired; Ricardo Ortiz, 70, cabinetmaker, retired; Manuel Moreno, 70, mobile home builder, retired, and Tom Traba, 65, construction laborer, retired.

All are veterans of World War II, except Traba, a veteran of the Korean War. All were in the Army or Army Air Corps, except Hitz, a former Navy cook, and Moreno, a former seaman. All live in Sylmar, save Nixon, who lives in Lake View Terrace.

And all are in uniform: navy blue slacks with white web belt bearing an American flag buckle; pale blue shirt with black epaulets, burial squad insignia and individual campaign ribbons; navy blue ascots; foldable navy blue cloth hats.

Up the Polk Street onramp and west along the 210 rolls the transport, a battle-loosened white 1987 GM minibus with the squad’s name painted on the sides. South on the 5 and west on the 118 it bangs and shudders, maneuvering toward Oakwood Memorial Park in Chatsworth.

Inside, the bus smells of sweat and after-shave, of chewing gum and the cashews being passed around. A crucifix and a Star of David are stowed along one wall. The talk is loud. There are hearing aids present.

“I feel today that these guys went overseas and fought for their country and they deserve a military funeral,” says Tukesbrey, by way of explaining his participation.

“Lots of people seem to forget,” agrees Nixon, “but Hitler was one bad dude, and we had to stop him.”

Moreno passes around small foil packets of moistened towelettes. “Condoms for everybody,” he says.

“This goes on all the time,” says Nixon, laughing. “Just like in the Army. These guys talk s--- all the time.”

A boombox sits near driver Hitz. It will be used to play taps because the squad’s current bugler is on vacation.

“We had one bugler for 15 years, but he got Alzheimer’s,” says Tukesbrey. “One day he came out for a burial and drove himself, but forgot what he was doing and got lost somewhere on Sepulveda. Fortunately, he still knew his phone number and he called his wife. She went and got him, but wouldn’t let him come out anymore.”

The squad reaches its objective, the tented and beflowered final resting place of their fallen comrade Charles M. Miller, a man no squad member personally knew. The ceremony doesn’t begin for half an hour, and no mourners are present yet. The squad moves into action.

Traba sticks an M-1, bayonet first, into the ground and places a soldier’s steel-pot helmet on its butt. Lauer and Tukesbrey unfurl American and squad flags and affix them on stakes driven into the earth. Moreno brings the boombox and a stool to set it on. The squad clumps together in the meager shade of a small tree. Hurry up and wait.

Leo Sharp has come to the cemetery separately, driven by his wife. Sharp founded the All Veterans Burial Squad as a nonprofit, donation-dependent organization in 1975 when the U.S. government stopped providing military honors at veterans’ burials. He also helped establish four similar squads in San Gabriel, West Covina, L.A. National Cemetery and Riverside.

Sharp is 82, a retired heating and air-conditioning contractor. He has a plastic tube inserted in his nose and looped around his ears. It’s connected to a small tank of oxygen on a wheeled cart he pulls along with him.

Sharp took a bullet in the left leg and a back-full of shrapnel at Normandy. He was in a military hospital for 2 1/2 years and underwent half a dozen back operations. Since then, he’s endured a coronary triple bypass and the insertion of Teflon arteries in both legs. But it took emphysema to take him out of the front lines of burial attendance.

“I’ve probably been to four or five thousand burials,” he says. “Used to be we’d have them seven days a week, sometimes two and three a day. Having the other squads finally took some of the pressure off us. But I never missed a funeral until two years ago when I got this emphysema and couldn’t hardly walk anymore.”

The flag-covered coffin arrives. The squad takes up its position, standing in a row at parade rest in the insistent sun.

The mourners gather in the cool of the tent. A clergyman eulogizes the deceased--a 79-year-old Quartermaster Corps veteran--as a stubborn but lovable man who overcame many hardships.

“He loved animals . . . “ the eulogist goes on. “At restaurants he always ordered fried shrimp . . . “

The sun keeps pouring it on the squad.

Finally, Tukesbrey, who is squad chaplain, gets to recite his military prayer, which reminds all present that they, too, will one day “follow the long columns to the realms above as all-enfolding death hour by hour shall mark his recruits . . . “

Then, three times, the seven riflemen of the squad fire their M-1s. The crack of the rifles, shockingly loud after the softly said eulogy and prayers, drifts out and dissipates across the cemetery’s expanse.

Hitz and Acebo fold the coffin flag, and Hitz presents it to the widow, “by direction of the president of the United States and with the respect of 30 million American veterans.”

Less than two hours after setting out, the squad is in transit once more, and thirstily into the diet sodas.

Squad members must deploy at another burial tomorrow, and another three days hence. The rest of today, however, holds out for them only the quotidian stuff of retirement.

“We’ll go face the ‘Honey-Do’ list,” shrugs Nixon.

“We’ll go home and chase the wives,” says Acebo, “even though, at our age, it’s all catch-and-release.”

Time has widened the middles of the eight men on the bus. It’s stuffed their ears with hearing devices and emptied their houses of children while bestowing 95 compensatory grandkids (the men admit the total may be a little off inasmuch as they frequently lose count).

It has not, however, robbed them of the subtle but steady elation that comes with having survived the wars of their youth and everything else since. They are still prevailing, in other words, over the enemy whose power they come face to face with every time they go on a mission.

As the old bus churns east on the 210, Tukesbrey strikes up a verse of “The Happy Wanderer.” The rest of the squad joins in the chorus: “Valderi . . . valdera . . . valderi . . . valde ha ha ha ha ha ha . . . “

The bus heads for Polk Street. The men, glad for the camaraderie, glad for the day, sing their way toward their exit.