PREMATURE BURIALS
(and a Few of My Other Minor Mistakes)
When I was a kid, I often echoed the words I’d heard from William Bendix’s character in the 1940s Life of Riley radio comedy series: “This is the Life!” When I felt good, I would feel even better if I could first puff out my chest, and then rasp Riley’s smug exclamation, “Ahh! This is the life!” There were many occasions when the exclamation was unspoken, but still deeply felt. They occurred when I thought I had finally arrived following some great milestone in my life -- like attending my first day of school in the first grade. I would feel that
1. I was a veteran;
2. I knew stuff;
3. I had arrived! “This is the life!”
Looking back, it’s easy to see the similarity of such feelings with those I had entering the second grade. I could look back with patronizing condescension on first graders.
1. I was really a veteran;
2. I really knew stuff;
3. I had really arrived! “THIS is the life!”
Whether or not these sentiments were repeated every year, I don’t recall. But they were in full bloom again when I entered junior high. Looking back at the grammar school crowd, my awareness was more keen than ever, that
1. Now I was a veteran;
2. Now I really knew stuff!
3. I had really arrived! “This is the life!”
If this starts to sound like a shaggy dog story . . . well, that’s been the story of my life! I recall such experiences from the beginning of each year of high school with equal clarity. Same for the beginning of each subsequent year of continuing education! At some point, one might think it might occur to me, “Hey! I’ve been here before!” But when I felt really good about my current arrival in enlightened bliss, such awareness was lost in ecstatic appreciation:
“THIS is REALLY the life!”
One might think that an occasional epiphany might have helped at this point. In their Story of Civilization, Will and Ariel Durant observed that it seldom does. Many aphorisms bemoan human frailty when it comes to learning enough from history to alter our future. This is especially true in things spiritual. Jesus told his disciples that they would all be offended because of Him that very same evening. Peter became indignant. Not me, Lord! “Although all shall be offended, yet will not I.”
Peter was a veteran.
He knew stuff.
He had arrived!
I should have suspected the possibility that I had not arrived. It was not to be! The pattern continued well into my adult life. It peaked in 1961 after I was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Air Force. In 1963, I underwent aircrew first aid training at Travis Air Force Base, California. The instructor, a steely-eyed staff sergeant named Wilbur Riley, spoke with rigid authority about treatment of casualties. His priorities were hard and fast: first, control bleeding; then, apply CPR as necessary to restore and maintain breathing and circulation. The sergeant was particularly adamant that such efforts should be continued indefinitely “until a doctor arrives to pronounce the casualty dead.” Sgt. Riley refused to budge on these or any other points. He failed to see that
I was a veteran.
I knew stuff.
I had arrived,
but he permitted no challenge to his training. When I asked about a situation where no doctor was available, like a remote crash site, he repeated his instructions, verbatim: first, control bleeding; then, apply CPR as necessary to restore and maintain breathing and circulation until a doctor shows up.
“And if a doctor never shows up?” I asked.
“Then continue to control bleeding; and apply CPR as necessary to restore and maintain breathing and circulation.”
When I tried to ask, “What if the person is obviously dead . . .,” he interrupted my question.
”Lieutenant, there ain’t nobody ever obviously dead!” He continued to interrupt each of my subsequent, personal opinions. As an officer on flight status, I just knew that he failed to recognize my expertise.
“Sarge, if a man’s torso is over there,” and I pointed to one corner of the room, “and his head is over there,” pointing to the opposite corner, “then . . . .”
“Then, you place the head back into position on the torso, and proceed to control bleeding; and apply CPR as necessary to restore and maintain breathing and circulation.”
“Sarge, that the dumbest thing I’ve ever . . .”
“Lieutenant, it ain’t nearly as dumb as allowing any layman to diagnose death.”
Although Staff Sergeant Riley had the last word that day in 1962, I left the training convinced that he was one of the stupidest men I had ever met.
I was a veteran.
I knew stuff.
I had arrived.
Thirteen years later, I was one of six Air Force officers attending the Army Command and General Staff College (CGSC) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. During one of the training exercises, I was placed in charge of a command post for a simulated combat exercise. A squad leader radioed that his unit had just taken a mortar round that killed two of his men and wounded three others. I dispatched an ambulance to retrieve all 5 casualties. During the subsequent debriefing, my team was penalized, because the referees said I had violated Army policy by transporting the dead with the wounded. I should have sent a graves registration team for the dead men!
“But no one was actually dead yet,” I protested.
“You didn’t hear the squad leader tell you that two of his men were dead?”
“Oh, I heard him, okay,” I continued. “But according to this unit’s roster, that squad leader is not even a corpsman -- much less a doctor.”
The Army refused to budge. The penalty stuck. The apparent aim of that exercise was to enforce the Army policy for early segregation of the living from the dead. Later, I learned that this was not just a training anomaly. The Army was geared for handling mass casualties, and this had become part of its normal triage in combat.
As part of the Army curriculum, I was allowed to submit a thesis in order to earn an accredited degree in Military Arts and Science. The thesis was expected to rely upon statistical analysis of empirical data. When I proposed a thesis on “Premature Burial of Battlefield Casualties,” the faculty tried to discourage me. Reluctantly, they allowed me to proceed. They warned I would have to find enough “empirically verifiable data” to show a statistically significant occurrence of mistakes made in de facto death pronouncements. I must also show a high probability that such mistakes could be expected to continue.
The inclusion of the term de facto death pronouncements addressed the situation in their training exercise. Such pronouncements were routinely accepted in combat -- what Sgt. Riley had described as “allowing a layman to diagnose death.”
In the months to come, I interviewed dozens of combat veterans, several of whom had served in graves registration facilities in Vietnam. I visited Army Graves Registration School at Fort Lee, Virginia. Word spread among the students and faculty at CGSC that an Air Force student was investigating Army de facto death pronouncements. Several people came forward to relate personal experiences. Some were not supportive.
One macho veteran placed a condescending hand on my shoulder, and assured me that after a few combat tours, “You get to know!” He could tell right away when someone was really dead. He was a combat veteran. He knew his stuff. He had arrived.
My thesis was published in 1976. It remains on file in the school’s archives, documented with dozens of surprisingly graphic photos taken from medical files at Fort Sam Houston. In response, the Army withdrew three of the five films that were being used in their Fort Lee training. The withdrawn films had depicted graves registration teams bagging and tagging casualties without even a cursory examination by medics.
Then, the evidence began to mount that not even experienced physicians, using modern diagnostic technology, were infallible in their diagnosis of death. One Army nurse described assisting in an autopsy where her medical team opened a man’s chest cavity, and found his heart was still beating. That was the tip of an iceberg!
Another Army major, in charge of a graves registration point in Viet Nam, found 3 people brought in for embalming were still alive -- in sealed body bags. “How did you know they were still alive?“ I asked.
“They were sweating -- profusely.”
“But didn’t they teach you at Fort Lee that such sweat was due to post mortem glandular secretions?”
He chuckled, “I missed the formal training, so I didn’t know any better!”
Incredibly, Fort Lee had been teaching its students to regard vital signs as ordinary post mortem events. Muscular contractions were routine. Some students recalled claims of “post mortem speech.” School instructors were trying to preclude their graduates from being spooked by sounds they heard at night.
Prior to arterial embalming, people sometimes woke up at their own funerals. For centuries, a widespread fear of premature burial had prompted wealthy folk, including royal families (and even some popes) to have their heads severed and/or their hearts surgically removed prior to burial. The phrase “saved by the bell” has been attributed to one case where an above ground crypt had a rope tied to an external belfry.
The post historian at Fort Leavenworth invited me to read an account where Colonel Whalen, the post commander there in 1845, was pronounced dead. He revived while his body was being washed at a local mortuary in town. He walked back onto the post, and interrupted the promotion party for his successor.
Colonel Whalen left instructions for the next time he died: he was not to be buried. His body was to be kept in an above ground, ammunition magazine where it could be observed until he was well-decomposed. Five years later, the Army honored his request.
A half century later, two Army surgeons, Drs Tebb and Vollum, published a non-fiction book entitled Premature Burial after one of them narrowly missed being interred alive. One physician actually heard the other pronounce him dead. Following their subsequent research, they stated at least 10% of all medical death pronouncements were premature.
Later, the Army moved one of its military cemeteries in Florida to make room for a new dam; 120 gravesites were moved in which 3 caskets were in great disarray. Obvious scratches were visible on the inside of the coffin lids. Investigators believed that the men who tried to claw their way out were probably not the only ones to be buried alive; they were just the only ones with enough strength to leave evidence of their struggle.
Today, we no longer fear being found in such tight spots.
We are veterans.
We know stuff.
But have we developed an unwarranted confidence in technology and medical expertise?
In the early 1970s, I was in Hawaii when a prayer group kept vigil near a comatose man on life support. When doctors observed the man’s EEG trace had gone flat, they pulled the plug. The man’s heart continued to beat. He resumed normal breathing. A few hours later, he woke up. Doctors attributed the flat EEG trace to an improper gain setting, or perhaps to some mechanical malfunction. They were not sure. But their medical opinions had become irrelevant for the folks who were praying.
Prior to the introduction of sophisticated electronic devices, resuscitation efforts were not always employed to avoid early acceptance of death pronouncements. A significant milestone occurred during in England during the 50s; a young boy fell through the ice on a river. His body was carried downstream, still trapped under the surface ice. A nearby rescue team punched a stopwatch as they began recovery efforts. The body was underwater for 27 ½ minutes.
Convinced that resuscitation was unlikely, the team still complied with their mandatory procedures, (over the protests of an attending physician). The physician was a veteran. He knew if this resuscitation were successful, the boy would surely be a vegetable. Oxygen deprivation would have destroyed his brain cells.
The boy revived. His case was written up in Lancet, a British medical journal. There was no trace of the expected brain damage. A hypothermic coma had reduced the brain’s oxygen requirements. Experiments indicated a 10% drop in oxygen requirement for each one degree drop in core body temperature.
Hypothermic coma can be induced not only by submersion in ice water, but also by some head injuries - even in temperate climates. Two cases were reported in Viet Nam: The first involved a lieutenant whose unit was overrun by VC. An American lieutenant attempted to play dead. A VC officer, suspecting the masquerade, shot him in the head at close range - a proverbial coup de grace. More than a day later, a relief unit arrived, and found the man still alive. He was transported to the hospital at Travis AFB, California, and enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner with his family.
The second case was a man name Jacky Bayne. He arrived at a Viet Nam graves registration facility with a tag on his toe indicating he had been dead for 3 days. The mortician was preparing to use a force pump for injecting embalming fluid to replace the blood, which was expected to be coagulated; however, when the man’s femoral artery was severed, there was no coagulation.
The mortician called for a medic. The man was resuscitated - again with no mental impairment. A follow-up story was run several years later, telling of Jacky Bayne’s return to his wife in the US. Subsequently, he fathered two children.
I became increasingly curious, along with my thesis committee, to learn what evidence could be used to show when someone is really dead. When does resuscitation become impossible? Rigor mortis? No! A wide variety of muscle spasms imitate rigor.
Repeatedly, I tried to find a reasonable refutation of Sgt. Riley’s assertion that “there ain’t nobody ever obviously dead!” But the more I looked, the more I respected Sgt. Riley’s insistence upon some attempt at resuscitation.
Well, surely decomposing flesh where the bones have been exposed and are starting to dry, are evidence that resuscitation is futile? Nope! This is where the photos from the medical archives show that severely traumatized casualties have survived injuries with compound fractures (exposed bones) surrounded by gangrenous flesh. In some cases, fleshy portions rot away, exposing dried bone. The stench is indistinguishable from that of a rotting corpse.
The frontiers for resuscitation kept getting pushed further and further toward Sergeant Riley’s description of a severed head. Then, I found a report from the Korean conflict:
Again, it was a lieutenant “killed” in a skirmish. He “got his head blown off” by a concussion grenade. One of the squad’s survivors made it back to friendly lines and reported the lieutenant’s death, recalling that “body parts were scattered over a wide area.”
A few hours later, the lieutenant walked back into camp, soaked in his own blood. His profuse bleeding had come from superficial surface cuts. If there was a severed head, it belonged to someone else. The lieutenant’s flak jacket, almost blown off may have hidden his head, making him look like a headless torso. Staff Sergeant Wilbur Riley was vindicated!
I realized that my dumb old staff sergeant was actually a master of the rabbinic art of hyperbole - presenting a truth via a memorable illustration. If the initial survivor had just attempted to “. . . place the head back into position on the torso, and proceeded to control bleeding . . . “ his mistake would have become evident immediately. He might have enjoyed the lieutenant’s gratitude on their return trip together.
There are saints whose tolerance can embrace such anomalies only in secular matters. Their use of the term “secular” betrays a dichotomy in their thinking. For example, one of my dearest, fundamentalist friends assures me that the Sermon on the Mount is infallibly inspired; however, it has little relevance to some worldly realities -- especially in a post 9-11 world. He criticizes some Christians for our ignorant use of commonly accepted names for deity (e.g., God); however, he is slow to hear the increasingly common horror stories of US sponsored torture, and the modification of our professed values at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
Similarly, the basic concept of a de facto death pronouncement begs an assumption regarding miracles. The Bible assures us that Lazarus was really dead, although his resurrection was technically an instance of resuscitation. He would still die, as would anyone else resurrected for short extensions to their earthly lives. Then, as now, we regard events that defy natural explanations to be supernatural.
What seems unnatural today, of course may become somewhat more natural tomorrow. In another few thousand years, science might possibly be able to resuscitate an Egyptian mummy. Such resuscitations will probably continue to be temporary.
Some charismatic believers realize we do have a real potential to raise the dead -- especially in today’s world where there are many veterans who know stuff. One doesn’t have to be a Christian to attempt resuscitation, and he/she can be successful even in the face of flat lines on electrical diagnostic equipment. Skeptics will always argue that resuscitated people were not really dead. But such skeptics are begging the real question! Where would the “not really dead” people wind up without being brought back to life? And would God refuse to cooperate with someone who knowingly allowed for the possibility that the dead person was simply de facto dead at that point? Or that the corpse might be capable of being resuscitated from a hypothermic coma?
As believers, if we are worried about appearing foolish to outside observers, we can modestly apply CPR, and silently pray for resuscitation. It is less dramatic than audibly invoking the name of Jesus. But the next of kin will be no less grateful for the restoration of a loved one.