Metz, France

Funerals were never expected to be funny. But in the splendid detachment one assumes as the member of the honour guard, paying collective last respect to an unknown comrade, a wonderful silliness takes over to ease the solemnity of the occasion.

As a former air force ‘erk’ I had more than my share of funerals and I rarely attended one that didn’t deliver this comic relief.

There was the time the ’groupie’ lost his shoe in the graveside mud. Or the Montreal funeral parade for the late King George VI when the bugle froze up, reducing the Last Post to a sort of Kazoo solo. It didn’t take much to qualify as funeral mirth. And like the joke in church, it usually became magnified beyond all reason.

It was in France during the glorious early years of the Air Division, circa 1954. An officer had been killed in a motor accident near Paris. In the confusion that seized the integrated Allied force with which he served, some sort of international compromise was arrived at for the disposition of the remains. Normally it would have been routine. But when the Americans, French, British, Dutch and Belgians had all contributed suggestions, the body was embalmed (a rarity for France) and duly deposited in a magnificent oaken creation which had a lead lining, just for the final touch. It was reputed to weigh 1,200 pounds. The deceased was a big man.

The cemetery was a beautiful place. A picturesque chapel was framed by tall Lombardy poplars and swaying willows. It stood at the end of a long pea stone path which had recently been replenished with stones, making it somewhat difficult to walk on. The scene was too much for our imaginative guard commander and he made good use of the time afforded by the overdue hearse to design a ceremony like no other.

Instead of the routine graveside service he told us with excited enthusiasm, we in the rifle party would line the pea stone path with rifles at the ‘present’ as the casket was carried the 200 yards to the grave. We were to fall in as it passed and follow it to the plot where we would fire the traditional volleys in salute.

The first inkling of trouble was not long coming. It began with a wheezing and whooshing sound. Out of the extreme corner of my curious eye, I discovered the source of the unusual noise. Six flight sergeants, most of them overweight and degenerated severely from tax-free liquor and cigarettes, were struggling with the heavy casket. When the procession reached me, the red-cheeked pallbearers were gasping loudly. And then ... KARUNCH!! The heavy casket nosed into the pea stones.

Almost without hesitation, the six honourary pallbearers pitched in to help carry the load. This put six men on either side of the casket, each with a couple of fingers through the individual handles for their 100-pound share of the burden.

It looked like a tall, staggering centipede as the valiant 12 struggled their way up the path. The close quarters forced upon them was complicated more than somewhat by the tendency of one bearer to remove the oxfords of the man in front of him.

All of this of course was hilariously funny to we riflemen who were supposed to maintain a military stoicism. When we all came to a halt at the graveside, the panting sounded somewhat like the baying of 12 laryngitic bloodhounds. Fortunately, it drowned out the unmuffable snickers from those of us who were knotted up inside, dying to leap into the bushes to unleash a well-deserved shriek of laughter.

The surprising weight of the casket caused much concern when the load was set down atop the grave which was spanned by two flimsy looking boards. The congregation winced as the supports sagged deeper and deeper. By some miracle, they didn’t break.

After the Padre had said his part, it was our turn to salute the deceased with our gunfire. At the command ‘FIRE’, there erupted a staccato roar, not unlike that of a string of large firecrackers. On rifle fired, then another ... and in about five seconds all shots – which should have sounded as one – had been fired – or at least the shooting stopped.

But in the stillness of the moment BANG went the last rifle. The paper wad that rendered the bullet almost harmless hit an airman in the back of the head, spinning his wedge cape end-over-end across the cemetery. It spun him around on his heels to face us with a silly grin, his eyeballs counter-rotating in their sockets.

This was too much. Our stomach and facial muscles were wrenched in knots and our uniforms soaked with perspiration that had been forced to the surface by the pressures of laugh suppression. We never did get that one fantastic, laugh-out-loud that we needed so badly.

No doubt this all sounds boorishly disrespectful of the dead. But I can think of worse things than to provide such entertainment as one’s earthly parting shot.