One Circular Went To Sixty-One Bases. Five Mortuaries Kept The Call Slips.
A Roswell funeral home's 1947 day book records three calls from the air field asking about hermetically sealed caskets, child sizes included. A Quartermaster circular dated 24 June had ordered every installation to survey exactly that.
ROSWELL, New Mexico — The day book is a bound ledger, ruled in columns, and it lives in a flat grey box on an open shelf in a county historical society four hours from an airport. Anyone may ask for it. Eleven people have.
This newspaper photographed all fourteen pages of the week of 30 June 1947. Three entries record calls from the air field.
5 July, morning column: RAAF — mortuary offr — herm. sealed caskets, sizes avail., incl. child. 8 July, afternoon: RAAF again re preparation of bodies exposed to elements — refd Mr. B. 9 July, four words: sealed caskets — none stocked.
The ink does not change. The hand does not change. The entries sit in sequence between a burial, two flower orders and an invoice for a hearse.
Nothing about the ledger is wrong, and that is worth stating plainly, because for most of forty years the argument about these calls has been an argument about whether the book existed.
It exists. It is exactly as described.
The order that was already out
On 24 June 1947 the Office of the Quartermaster General issued a circular: one page, six numbered paragraphs, requiring every Army Air Forces installation to survey the mortuary capacity obtainable within fifty miles and report inside thirty days.
Paragraph four asks for hermetically sealed caskets available locally, "in all sizes carried". Paragraph five asks about local capacity to prepare remains "recovered after exposure".
The child sizes are in paragraph four because installations had dependants living on them — wives, children, the families of officers. Paragraph one gives the reason for the whole exercise, and the reason is the previous year's aircraft accident rate.
It is a headcount problem. It is filed as a headcount problem.
Sixty-one installations were on the distribution list.
What we did with sixty-one
An order sent to sixty-one places should have left sixty-one shadows. So we went looking for shadows.
We picked seven other fields, chose the funeral home nearest each, and asked what survived from July 1947. Six of the seven still hold their books. One lost everything before 1961 to a fire in a storeroom.
Five of the six carry an entry. All five fall between 26 June and 14 July. Three name the base. Two name a mortuary officer by rank.
One of them — the firm nearest Smoky Hill Army Air Field, at Salina, Kansas — asks the same two questions in the same order. Sealed caskets, sizes. Then preparation after exposure. The wording tracks paragraphs four and five closely enough that our correspondent laid the two documents side by side twice before he would write it down.
What this does, and what it does not
It does not establish that nothing was recovered near Roswell in July 1947. Nothing written in a ledger could establish that, in either direction.
What it does is take the ledger out of the argument. The three calls are no longer strange. They are five-sixths of a pattern that runs across a fortnight and four states, and behind the pattern is a piece of paper with a date on it and sixty-one addresses.
The entry that does not fit
The Smoky Hill firm was answering a questionnaire. You can hear it in the syntax.
The Roswell entry for 8 July is not that. It is phrased as a live request — preparation of bodies exposed to elements, referred to a named man — and a survey return does not require anybody to be prepared.
We cannot tell from ink which it was. We have put that in the unverified list, where it belongs, and Odile Wrenn-Petracca has spent a paragraph of her reply pointing out that we then wrote a headline as though we had settled it.
She is right, and the standards editor got there first, and both notes stay on the page.
The fifty-four
Ms. Wrenn-Petracca has been asking for the remaining installations since 1994 and has never had the money for the postage.
She offered, in the last paragraph of her reply, to write the letters herself and publish everything that comes back, including whatever makes her look foolish.
We have accepted, and this newspaper is paying the postage. Whatever arrives will run here, under her name, and it will not be edited by us.
The six o'clock edition
Three stories a morning, in your inbox before the coffee is made.
Sources & Method
We did not argue about whether the ledger exists. We photographed it, found the order that would account for it, and then went looking for the same shadow in other towns near other fields. Seven fields, seven funeral homes, one fire, five matches. The photographs and the circular's distribution list are published with this item so that anyone may go and check the fifty-four we did not.
Who we spoke to
- Day book of a Roswell funeral home, week of 30 June 1947, Held by a county historical society. Photographed by this newspaper at 600 dots per inch, all fourteen pages of the week, published entire with this item 17 June 2026 The society charged us nothing and asked only that the box be handled with both hands.
- Office of the Quartermaster General, circular of 24 June 1947, One page, six numbered paragraphs, with distribution list. Located through a records-group finding aid and copied at the archive; the distribution list is published in full May 2026 Paragraph four asks for sealed caskets 'in all sizes carried'. Paragraph five asks about remains 'recovered after exposure'.
- Seven funeral homes in seven towns near seven air fields, Family firms, four of them still in the founding family. Telephoned, then visited; six produced 1947 records for inspection, and five of those carry an entry March to July 2026 Four asked not to be named and are not named. Two consented and are. The seventh lost its pre-1961 records to a storeroom fire and had nothing to show us.
- Mildred Cathcart-Ozuna, Archivist, the county historical society. Interviewed in the reading room, beside the open box 17 June 2026 Has fielded this request eleven times since 1998 and says nobody before us asked to see the rest of the week.
- Odile Wrenn-Petracca, Researcher; has published on the Roswell mortuary calls since 1994. Read the full draft; replied in writing with no deadline August 2026 Thinks our sample is too small for our headline. Her reply is printed unedited and she is right about the headline.
What we could not confirm
- The other fifty-four installations. We checked seven. Whatever the circular produced at the remaining fifty-four is not in this story, and every sentence here should be read against that gap.
- Who at the field made the calls. The Roswell day book says only 'RAAF'. The base mortuary officer's post appears vacant for part of July 1947 on a duty roster whose middle column we could not read.
- Whether the Roswell calls were only the survey. A survey return does not require asking a funeral director whether he can prepare remains that have been out in the weather, and the 8 July entry is phrased as a request rather than a question. Ink cannot tell us which it was.
How Others Covered This
The same events, as reported elsewhere on the same day. We list what each outlet had that we did not, as well as what we had that they did not — including where we come off worse. Why we print this.
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The Meridian TelegraphMORTICIAN'S OWN LEDGER CONFIRMS THE ROSWELL BODIES
Ran the three entries as a confirmation, and ran them accurately, which is the frustrating part.
Had that we did not
A clean transcription of all three lines, better than ours in one place.
Left out
The circular. It is one page, it is in a published finding aid, and it explains the child sizes in a subordinate clause.
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The Continental WireHistorical Society Says 1947 Funeral Records Are Authentic
Ran the society's authentication statement as the news.
Had that we did not
That the day book is genuine and unaltered. It is. Nobody had said otherwise.
Left out
What the entries say. A reader of the wire item learns that a book is real and not one word of what is written in it.
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They Buriedthis newspaperOne Circular Went To Sixty-One Bases. Five Mortuaries Kept The Call Slips.
Photographed the ledger, found the order that would explain it, then went looking for the same shadow in other towns.
Had that we did not
The circular's distribution list, six funeral homes' records, and the one entry that undercuts the tidy version.
Left out
We checked seven installations of sixty-one and then put sixty-one in the headline. The figure caption is honest about the ratio; the headline borrows a scale we did not earn. — V. Ashcombe-Doyle, standards editor
Right of Reply
They Buried contacted Odile Wrenn-Petracca, researcher sent the full draft on 6 August 2026, with the circular and all six ledger images, and no deadline. Replied on 11 August 2026. Printed in full and unedited.
You checked seven of sixty-one and put sixty-one in the headline. I would start there, because everything else I have to say is smaller.
Let me be clear about my own position, since it is usually described for me. I have never written that these three entries prove bodies. I have written, for thirty-two years, that they are three entries in a book, that the book is real, and that the standard reply — that the funeral home was making it up, or that the ledger did not exist — was lazy. You have now confirmed the ledger. Thank you. It took a newspaper twenty-eight years to send a photographer four hours from an airport.
What I object to is the shape of the piece.
A survey return is a letter. Paragraph four asks how many sealed caskets a firm can obtain and in which sizes. That is a stock question and I accept it entirely; the child sizes have never troubled me and I have said so in print twice. But paragraph five asks about local capacity, in the abstract, and your own 8 July entry is not phrased in the abstract. It is phrased as a job. You noticed that. You put it in your unverified list, which is honourable, and then you wrote a headline that steps straight over it.
Five matches out of six is a strong result and I am not going to pretend otherwise. What it establishes is that the circular went out and that funeral directors answered it. It does not establish that the three Roswell calls were the circular's, because the Roswell calls are the only ones in your set that ask for something rather than report something. Smoky Hill repeats the questions. Roswell makes a request. Those are different documents and your chart draws them as the same bar.
I want the fifty-four. I have wanted them since 1994 and I have never had the postage. If your newspaper will fund the letters I will write them myself, at my own desk, and I will publish everything that comes back, including the answer that makes me look like a woman who spent thirty-two years on a stationery order.
Published unedited under our right-of-reply guarantee.
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