Final Salute: casualty notification in the United States Marines

Photo: Todd Heisler/The Rocky Mountain News

“Final Salute” is a very touching series of photos from the Rocky Mountain News that follows Maj. Steve Beck of the United States Marines as he goes about doing quite possibly one of the hardest jobs in the world: notifying family members of the death of a fellow Marine in service.

The following is from The New York Times:

While “Final Salute” is not a muckraking book, it is still quietly horrifying. It bears witness to the ways in which casualties from Iraq are shielded from sight. Mr. Sheeler’s readers may not have realized, for instance, that dead soldiers’ coffins have been hidden in cardboard boxes (ostensibly to protect the coffins), toted by forklifts and stowed in the cargo holds of passenger planes.

Among the eloquent Rocky Mountain News photographs included here is a shocking image — by Todd Heisler, now of The New York Times — of commercial airline passengers looking out plane windows at Reno-Tahoe International Airport in Nevada, trying to see what is happening beneath them. Down there, in the cargo hold, a Marine honor guard is preparing to deliver the flag-draped coffin of Second Lt. James J. Cathey to its final resting place.

Jim Sheeler, a reporter for the Rocky Mountain News, has published a book of these photographs called “Final Salute“. The book won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing and feature photography.

The Rocky Mountain News website has a dedicated page to “Final Salute” with an audio slideshow, video, and photographs to accampany it. You can also download the complete print story as a 10MB PDF file [PDF file link here].

If you want to see more photos, the New York Times has a condensed version of the photographs from the Rocky Mountain News in this photo slideshow.

This is seriously one of the saddest series of photos I’ve ever seen. It’s good to know that these Marines are getting the proper respect they deserve for sacrificing their lives for this country.