By Linda Winsh-Bolard
Did you ever think about how the bodies come back from war zone to the US? What is the procedure? What is done to the bodies before they are returned to their families? What happens to their personal effects?
No? I haven’t either. Somehow, I always thought of a telegram and a neat envelope with few remaining things.
That is absurd, when you truly think about it. When somebody dies violent death, in war; his or her body will be splattered with blood and /or other bodily tissues, dirtied and mutilated as will be everything they had with them. Between the funeral and the death, a lot must be done.
The story follows Chance Phelps before and during his last journey home. In heartbreaking details it chronicles all the different departments processing bodies of dead soldiers; dividing the process into small parts of an overall story of once, short time ago, living young people who are now packed, processed and buried.
It is all done with as much dignity as possible, yet there are necessary details that nobody wants to know about summarized by the colonel in charge of the processing center, Port Dover: these remain are not recommended for viewing. It was my honor to serve him.
Her crew did for Chance Phelps what they could. He was shot in the head.
It is sobering thought. As the body of Chance Phelps, accompanied by military escort, continues on his way to his burial site, it is handled with much reverence. The white box is only moved in the presence of his escort who salutes him each time, people stop, remain silent, take their hats off, pay their respects. Even his personal effects are regarded with reverence, but Chance still died horrible death.
Lt. Colonel Michael Strobl (Kevin Bacon) decided to escort the body of a boy from Cliffs, Colorado, his home town, without knowing that Chance’s parents are divorced and live in Dubois, Wyoming. Strobl suffers pains of conscience because he believes he avoided active service in the last war intentionally to stay home with his family. He feels that he betrayed his duty by staying behind, safe, out of daily's war killing. He is not naïve enough to think that acting as a voluntary escort will absolve him; he just needs to do something for his unknown colleague.
Strobl is soberly reminded of his own role in the Phelps’s family grief when he is told that Chance would have been honored that such senior officer escorted him home. Way out of Washington D.C. such gestures still have meaning. There are many small towns in the US where people are proud of those who joined, and honor all who served in wars. They call themselves patriots.
Among unsurpassed beauty of the half or completely forgotten corners of the country still lives raw, painful patriotism that never reaches Washington DC.
It is as if the great, astounding, immense open countryside, that not so long ago was home to different braves, is a home to feeling of belonging born of blood shed- along with prejudices, narrow mindness and backwardness as astonishing as the willingness to sacrifice and to be sacrificed. As the film says: Ironically, if there were more Chances, there would be no need for the Marines.
Director Ross Katz (producer of Lost in Translation and In the Bedroom) does not dwell on this, or on personal histories of the colonel and Chance’s family. There is very little about the war itself, because this is not political film in the usual sense. Military death is impersonal. The enemy kills a soldier. But the results are also numerous deaths of many Chance Phelpses. And these are personal.
This is the right choice, because this story is about the last journey of one fallen man who represents all fallen soldiers. This is about the ultimate for all of us, death. What each of us examines in our own conscience watching the last journey of Chance Phelps is up to us, but we all need to remember what colonel Strobl felt: as long as Chance Phelps was moving, he was not dead, once he was left alone in his grave, he stopped moving.
Kevin Bacon as the military escort gives a wonderful performance of man tired, worried and ridden by doubt who attempts to comprehend the incomprehensible: the end of life.
Lance Corporal Chance Phelps died on Good Friday 2004 wearing his Saint Christopher medal.
The film is dedicated to his memory. And to all fallen civilian and military.
