Tents in Kuwait Serve As U.S. Mortuary

[Barrett808]

Tents in Kuwait Serve As U.S. Mortuary
By JIM KRANE, Associated Press Writer

CAMP WOLVERINE, Kuwait - The bodies come in most every day. The American soldiers here strip them of their belongings and lay them in metal coffins packed with ice.

"Most people are scared of us," said Spc. Steve Rawlings, who works in the white tent serving as the mortuary for U.S. soldiers killed in neighboring Iraq (news - web sites). "Most people don't want to talk about death."

The Theater Mortuary Evacuation Point occupies a forlorn cluster of tents at the back corner of this sand-covered base in Kuwait, hidden behind stacks of shipping containers.

Few people venture here, other than an occasional jogger and the 30 mortuary affairs specialists like Rawlings, who handle the American corpses shipped to the base. Outside the main tent, a hundred or more metal caskets — or "transfer cases" — sit at the ready, each wrapped in plastic. A dusty refrigerator truck with a windshield sticker reading "Mortuary" is parked nearby.

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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&e=11&u=/ap/20040222/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_mortuary_3

[JoFerret]

1. What to say?

....an important easily forgotten story.