Graves Registration: It’s a Grim but Vital Function : Military: It takes a special type for the task of receiving and identifying dead soldiers.

Those who do it say it’s the most important job in the Army, and if a ground war starts, they are likely to be busy. Their unit is called the 54th Graves Registration Company, and their mission is to receive and identify dead soldiers.

“I still remember the first guy I worked on,” said Specialist Carlos Toro, 37, of Puerto Rico. “I remember his last name. Wee. It doesn’t take my sleep away, but I’ll never forget.”

To a man, the soldiers in graves registration take pride in their job. They look at it not so much as the morbid side of war as the reality of war. It’s better, they say, to remain emotionally isolated from their task, but few ever forget the faces of the dead. Those stay with them forever.

“We’re the guys who send our soldiers home,” said Specialist Aaron Houston, 21, of Ft. Lee, Va., one of four men in the graves registration unit of the 82nd Airborne Division’s 2nd Brigade. “We’re the ones who get them out of here so their families can have them back again. All the parents and relatives don’t accept the fact their son or daughter might be dead until they see the remains. I feel like I’ve done something for them and their families.”

Houston, who worked on the cases of 40 GIs who died accidental deaths in Operation Desert Shield before the war began, sends each American home with a prayer.

“I ask the Lord to take care of the soldiers on the journey home, the last leg,” he said. “I also say a prayer each and every night we don’t have this (ground) war.”

Houston’s four-man crew has four stretchers and 250 green body bags in its tent. With no major fighting yet under way along the front, some of the bags are being used as dust covers for their sleeping bags. Outside the tent is a refrigerated van to store bodies until they can be taken to Dhahran, then flown to Frankfurt, Germany, en route to the military mortuary in Dover, Del.

The first priority of graves registration is reclaiming American dead, honoring the nation’s tradition of not leaving its dead behind on the battlefield. The unit also will recover bodies of allied troops, civilians and Iraqi soldiers.

In addition to identifying the dead by dog tags, tattoos or personal effects in their wallets, the military uses a “battle roster,” a computerized tracking system made up of a two-letter, four-digit code that is supposed to help commanders keep track of the dead and wounded in the immediate aftermath of combat.

The battle roster also gives combat units a way of referring to individual soldiers over radio frequencies that the enemy may be listening to without identifying them by name or unit. Some troops have inked their battle roster numbers on the sides of their helmets.

Each body bag is accompanied by an olive-drab bag with a drawstring marked, “Deceased Military Personnel, Personal Effects,” containing items such as rings, watches, money and pictures.

“We kind of seem like vultures, just waiting for someone to die,” said Sgt. Dale Seigler, 26, of Rome, N.Y. “But it’s the Army taking care of its own. Somebody has to do it.”

This story was compiled in part from correspondent pool reports reviewed by military censors.