Kimbre’s column reminded me of something that happened during my time in the military. I worked in the Logistics Group, in the HQ building smack dab in the middle of the base. High profile, dress blues, etc. So there’s typically a lot of high-ranking traffic breezing through those hallways. Well our shop code was (I’m going to make one up so as not to divulge the actual code) 7LGCX. The base hospital’s was 7LGXC. We took a delivery for the hospital.

It’s not that they labeled it correctly and the mail carrier dropped it in the wrong building. They labeled it incorrectly, so it was actually addressed to us. This happened quite frequently too, like once every few weeks or so. Anyway, we got a large cold crate one time, sealed and insulated with dry ice cells. Not the kind of shipment we generally receive, but we opened it. After the fog cleared, I pulled the sheet of insulation plastic off the top of the contents pack and stared aghast at a crate full of human body parts.

Don’t ask me why her column reminded me of this, but it did. Anyway, we promptly closed the crate and resealed it, then called the hospital administrators to let them know we’d received a cold crate for them. “You didn’t open it did you?” Uh… My NCOIC was shaking his head at me, so I replied that no, we hadn’t. My curiosity got the best of me though, and I had to reopen the damn thing. There were several arms (not sets – some of them were different colors and sizes) and a left leg. WTF?

So the United States Air Force is in the business of shipping dead body parts around the country from base to base? When the hospital facilities crew came and picked up the crate, they took it without saying anything, and several hours went by uneventfully. Then the phone rang. We were being called to the carpet because the seal had been broken on the crate. So the technical sergeant and I went to see the medical group commander. Why had we told them we hadn’t opened it? Why had we opened it? Well about three minutes into the meeting, the door swung open and there stood the Logistics Group commander.

He had our backs. Always. He was a bad sumbitch. A colonel with an enlistment history. So he got a lot more respect from his subs than most officers did. He’d spent twelve years enlisted before he put on his bars, and had made tech sergeant himself. He walked slowly into the office and tossed his cap on the desk, then put his hands behind his back and looked at John and me. “You gentlemen are excused.” We stood, saluted and about-faced. The colonel then proceeded to rail the Major for about an hour.

Later that week, he called us into his office and explained to us why they ship body parts around, and why he did what he did. And of course, we weren’t supposed to just go blabbing about it. So we didn’t. Until now…