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SHERIDAN — A heavyset man labors up the aisle of a funeral home. He is unwell but not old. An oxygen tube runs through his nostrils, and he's wearing a T-shirt and jeans. The back and sides of his head are tattooed, like he once had a full head of ink but the dye receded into a horseshoe pattern. He is in line for his turn in front of the casket.

In the casket is laid flat a uniform that would be unrecognizable to the man that it represents. Cpl. DeMaret Marston Kirtley never wore those dress blues. When he was last in Wyoming, in July 1950, he wore tan fatigues. His parents and siblings were still alive. They still owned the ranch out north of Kaycee. Much has changed, of course. Even the port city in South Korea, where he boarded a ship and headed into the fight, has changed its name.

The man laboring up the aisle on Thursday afternoon waits for his moment with Marston. The procession winds its way past the casket.

They are here, in this room and lining the streets, for a man they never met, a soldier who died before many of them were even born.

Some stop to salute, others walk by with their hands over their hearts, a few barely glance at the uniform. Marston's remains are in the bottom of the casket, hidden from view.

The man with the oxygen reaches Marston and the empty uniform. He straightens up, and with the rigidity and precision that comes from constant drill in a previous life, he flattens his palm, tilts his arm and brings his hand to his temple.

"Welcome home, brother," the man tells Marston. He drops the salute. Then he leaves, walking slowly up the opposite aisle and out of the funeral home.

There are others. Before this moment, before the man and the oxygen, there is another man. This man is also bald, with a gray beard that comes to a natural point near his sternum. He is standing on the side of Main Street in Sheridan. His hat is over his heart. His face is contorted with emotion. The casket, the police cars, the family — none has even passed him yet. He is one of many that packed the sidewalks here.

Like the man with the oxygen, the crying man did not know Marston. Marston would have turned 90 in March if he hadn't disappeared into a howling nightmare 68 years and eight months ago near a little-known frozen reservoir in North Korea. But this man on the side of the road is crying. He is crying hard. He wipes his eyes with his hat and then returns the cap to his heart. The motorcade passes him by.

Memories

Zena Husman and Karmen Kirtley wonder. Who are these people? Where did they come from? Why? What draws hundreds of people to the side of the road to wave and salute and weep in front of a motorcade? Their uncle has been gone for nearly seven decades, and those that knew him are almost all gone, too.

These are not frustrated or suspicious questions. No, Marston's two nieces are in awe and a bit overwhelmed. They grew up referring to him as Uncle Marston, Who Was Missing In Action From the Korean War. He was a persistent absence. For years, there has been no Marston save for their memories and a box of letters and medals passed down through the family. Trips to Marston's mom's house, Gram Stella, often included a trip through that box.

They weren't alone with his memory. On Friday, during another public viewing of the casket, an elderly woman approaches Zena, the older of the sisters. In this woman's hands is a paper print-out of an old photograph. In pencil beneath the image is written the words "Antelope Basin '37-'38." It's a class picture in front of a schoolhouse. She points to herself and then to a scrawny boy in the front row, who's looking down his angular nose at the camera. That's Marston, no older than 9. Behind him and two students to the right is his older brother and Zena's father, Locke. Another row back is Marston's sister, Zaide.

This woman, June Taylor, went to school with Marston all those years ago. Her brother and Marston were good friends, she says. She remembers once — well, first, know that the schoolhouse was two and a half miles from the Kirtley's ranch in Antelope Basin. Locke and Marston — or Mart, as June calls him — would walk to school, and Zaide would ride a horse alongside them.

Anyway, one time, Marston was on the horse riding up to the schoolhouse. He was zig-zagging, June says, as he rode up. Turns out he had found a skunk and was trying to herd it to school.

"He was a fun kid," she says, laughing.

June says she thinks of Marston every year on his birthday, March 5. She can't explain why. She remembers seeing Marston the last time he was in Kaycee, in July 1950. He had just finished basic training and was preparing to ship off to Japan.

"What did he tell you?" Zena asks.

June remembers.

"I didn't remember you Jenkins girls being so beautiful," Marston told her, "or I would've stuck around."

The journey home

Zena and Karmen understand.

They hadn't yet when the plane landed Thursday in Billings. A small group of family, motorcyclists and reporters awaited the commercial Delta flight that would bring Marston nearly home. It touched down just after 12:30 p.m., gliding down out of the Montana sunshine.

Zena and Karmen held hands and approached the plane as a ramp was rolled to the nose, where a hole has opened. The sisters stand on the tarmac and wait, along with Zena's daughter, Kari; Karmen's partner, Ira; family friend and former Marine Charlie Ross; and Kari's husband and daughter.

A man in camo fatigues crawled into the hole. The pilots of the plane walked down a flight of stairs and stood to the side. An airport firefighter, maybe 150 yards away, stood with his hands clasped in front of him, two neon green engines at his back. Another airport worker sat in another motorized ramp, watching the scene through his iPhone. The jet's engine still roared, obfuscating the sound of a military plane that soared over the tarmac.

At last the flag-covered casket emerged. An honor guard of seven men approached it. Karmen later marveled at the precision: Six of them moved as one to lift Marston from the ramp, adjust the flag just so and slowly push him in the back of the waiting hearse. Zena and Karmen placed their hands on the back of the casket.

Marston finally arrives home in Wyoming just after 12:30 p.m. on Thursday, June 27, 2019. He is escorted by his family, their family, a small fleet of motorcycles and police cars. He passes the lush green landscape of his youth, past two men who stopped their weed eaters to gape from a nearby field. Marston passes beneath underpasses, where people hung American flags and waved, underneath the electronic signs that cross the highway.

He passes crowds of waving, saluting, crying, hands-over-their-hearts crowds when the procession pulls into Sheridan. There were so many people, Zena says later, she started to cry. She didn't expect this.

"It's a long journey," she says.

Karmen doesn't know what to do. She hadn't served in the military, she isn't the one in the hearse. She felt strange accepting the thank-yous. So she presses her palms flat together, as if praying, and thanks the crowds from the driver's seat of her car as she passes them by.

The sisters hold hands throughout the weekend's ceremonies. They come off as left brain-right brain: Karmen has the soft cadence of the teacher she is and talks about Marston as myth, wondering over his existence. Zena sometimes seems like a museum curator, speaking with bikers and old men in uniforms, shaking hands, holding her hands behind her back while talking about Marston.

Neither expected this. Karmen cries much of the weekend. Zena, who carried Marston's memory for years, tears up a few select times.

At Kane Funeral Home, where Locke used to work and where he is buried, Marston is carried inside by the honor guard. Bagpipes play, two dozen doves are released and a Civil War-era cannon booms. The motorcyclists, the man with the oxygen, the family, they pile in and file past, until the room is nearly empty again, leaving Marston alone in this place.

"I wish my dad would've been here," Zena says. It's been an overwhelming day.

Later, she'll look southeast, across the cemetery. Her father is buried over there, with her mother. It's the Masonic and Shriner part of the Sheridan cemetery, she says.

"So they were here," she says, smiling.

Relief and regret

There is a date of death attached to Marston's name. It is one of three days associated with Marston's death. Two are set in military type: There's the day he was determined to be missing — Dec. 6, 1950, when he didn't fall in for roll call after one of the great tragedies in Army history left hundreds of Americans dead east of a frozen reservoir in North Korea. Dec. 6 is the day Marston's unit — what was left of it — straggled into a Marine-held village and a full accounting was made of who was there and who was not. The battle that led to this moment lasted five days, ending with a miserable attempt to break out of a Chinese encirclement. As few as a third of Marston's task force — 3,200 men — made it to safety.

Then there's Dec. 31, 1953, when the military wrote Marston's parents and said it was declaring him dead.

The true date of his death will almost certainly never be known.

Marston was last reported seen walking wounded as the sun went down on Dec. 1. That day, his unit had started the desperate push out, and by the end of the day, it had disintegrated, shredded by Chinese bullets and Korean cold. Men fled a hobbled convoy of vehicles that had become a bullet magnet. They trudged over the hills, onto the frozen reservoir, into a night that held sub-zero temperatures and a glimmer of friendly lines.

In a letter to Marston's mother, Pvt. Israel Samuels — who was in the same artillery battery as Marston — said he saw the Kaycee ranch hand walking into the night.

Marston would be missing for 67 years, after a first round of attempted identification was unsuccessful in the 1950s. Back on the ranch, his family tried to keep hope alive — his mother, Stella, wrote letters to generals and senators and soldiers and other mothers for years. Did the Army know that Samuels had seen him? Would it help to know that another mother swore Marston was in a prisoner of war camp?

The family would wait until May 2018, for a call from a man the sisters call Shorty. Shorty, a casualty assistance officer, told them that remains had been disinterred the previous year and were now identified as Marston.

Relief, that he had been found. Regret, that Locke and his parents weren't alive to hear it. Wonder, that after so long, Marston would come home.

'That's what life's about'

Chuck Medina never met Marston. But the two served at Chosin together, in the same doomed task force. Chuck was 16. He was in the infantry, and Marston manned an artillery gun. Chuck had lied about his age to join the Army.

"He had a rough home life," his daughter, JoAnn Barker, explains.

"And I wanted to get out of the eighth grade," he jokes. The two sit in the back of Kane Funeral on Friday, during another public viewing of the casket.

He and Zena had never met until this day. But he lived right around the corner from her, he says.

"I'm glad you survived," she tells him.

"Me, too," he says.

He remembers the cold. Ten, 20, 30 below. He doesn't remember most of the men he served with. He didn't remember them when he was over there, either.

Karmen, who'd come and sat down next to Chuck in the back of the room, wipes her eyes again as she listens. Zena examines a large book Chuck had brought, full of photos from Korea.

Soft music fills the funeral home. Friday is slower here than the wave of Thursday. An older man in an older blue uniform, his breast heavy with medals, walks down the aisle and salutes Marston.

After a while, the family gathers at the front of the room to watch a slideshow of old photos of Marston and his family. Zena's granddaughter, Rowan, announces that her tooth had just fallen out. ("That's what life's about," Zena tells her.) "God Must Be A Cowboy," "Home on the Range" and "I'm Proud to Be An American" play over photos of a young Marston grinning in his eighth-grade graduation cap and gown. In another photo, he stands atop a mountain of hay.

Zena's daughter, Kari, puts her arm around her husband, Darren. Darren served. He'll tell you how long, down to the day. ("But who's counting?")

The slideshow ends with photos from Marston's last trip home, after basic training. He arrived on July 1, 1950, nearly 69 years ago to the day. There he is alongside his father, standing straight and squinting. He posed with his mom, his arm around her waist, both smiling. He was 20.

Wyoming soil

Zena doesn't sleep much in the run-up to Saturday. A few hours each night, five at most. Saturday morning, she is up by 3 a.m. She's at the funeral home a little after 6:30. Marston is already back in the hearse. The motorcyclists are there. They will shepherd him to the Kaycee Cemetery, where decades ago his family placed a memorial gravestone alongside his two brothers who died as children, years before Marston was born.

Zena will speak at the funeral, which will be held in the gymnasium, past downtown Kaycee. She says she's rewritten the speech several times. As of Friday, it was three times. By Saturday, it's too many to count, she says, laughing.

After the two-mile long procession makes its way through Kaycee, Marston is again picked up by the honor guard. They carry him inside and place him in the back of the gym, opening the casket so the uniform can be displayed again. Before anyone is allowed to file past, Master Sgt. Dale Willis, who's been helping Zena and the family throughout the funeral planning process, steps up. He leans over and inspects the uniform, adjusting. He's been doing this for years, he says. He volunteered for it, originally. Satisfied, he salutes and steps back.

The gym fills. Gov. Mark Gordon arrives. Zena said his family owned a ranch in Kaycee and knew the Kirtleys. Maj. Randy Sawyer, the military chaplain overseeing the service, begins the ceremony after the honor guard closes the casket and moves Marston to the front of the room. Sawyer prays, talks about Marston, about soldiers, about sacrifice.

"We don't know how exactly he died," Sawyer tells the crowd. "But one of the things that probably went through his mind is, 'I'm going to die here and be buried here.' "

He pauses.

"For a soldier, that is very hard to take," he says.

But Marston has been found now, Sawyer says. He's been brought home.

Zena rises to speak next. She thanks the motorcyclists, her family, the community. She describes how Marston's mother never gave up hope that Marston would one day walk through the door.

"Especially thinking of my grandmother, and what she experienced for over 30 years," Zena says. "It really made me think that war not only affects the military, but the families as well. So I feel like today we're not only honoring Marston for his service, but we're also honoring my family for making this great sacrifice."

Marston didn't died in vain, she says. That much is apparent by the number of people in the room.

She turns to the casket.

"Thank you for your service, Marston," she tells him. "It is once again time for you to be in a time of peace and happiness. You are home now, where you belong, where you were loved all these years."

After the service, the casket and the crowd head up the road, to Kaycee's cemetery atop the hill. The honor guard is waiting. It is bright and windy. Patriot Guard Riders form a wide square around Marston's plot, holding American flags. They snap to attention as the hearse pulls up.

The soldiers again carry Marston, this time setting him atop the grave that has awaited him for decades. Two rifles crack three times each, and the cannon again booms. Sawyer, the chaplain, bends down and takes a fistful of Wyoming dirt into his glove. A row over, a soldier plays the bugle, slow and mournful. The wind catches much of the melody, deafening it. Sawyer leads a prayer and slowly spreads the dirt over the American flag that covers the casket.

Three members of the honor guard fold the flag, turning the rectangle into a strip and then a tight triangle. A second flag is produced, and one is given to each of Marston's nieces. Karmen cries and thanks the soldiers.

A funeral home employee passes flowers to the family, who sit in green chairs next to the casket. They take turns placing them atop the casket.

Zena goes last. For years, she was the caretaker of Marston's memory. He lived as long as she kept the box. Now he is here, he is real, and he is home.

She places the last flower, a white carnation. She rests her hand on the casket once more, lingering there for just a second.

As the crowd begins to clear for a reception at the gymnasium, Zena and the family mill about. They hug each other and smile and chat. Zena holds the flag to her chest.

June steps forward, with the help of her daughter, Tina. She steps carefully past the gravestone for Early Webb. Marston and Uncle Early used to hunt bucks together. She avoids stepping on Marston's headstone, too. She was at the original memorial service for him, when the marker he will be buried behind was placed here, decades ago.

They're together again now. Wyoming dirt is still spread atop his casket. She places her hand on the wood for a moment, as Zena did, and pats it. Before she steps back, she whispers to him, her voice breaking slightly.

"Welcome home, old friend."

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