Written in Blood by Diane Fanning Page A

read, “Howdy, Good Buddy.” It was filled with cordial chit-chat: “I spent a week at home in Texas on leave. It was great. I really had a good time fishing and drinking Lone Star longnecks.” He wrote three pages in this vein before he grew tired and went to bed.
    It was still dark when Kent got up and turned on the light in the bathroom. It washed over his roommate’s bed, where George was tossing and turning in his sleep. Kent thought nothing of it as he cleaned up to face a new day.
    When he was done, Kent stepped into the bedroom to pull on his flight suit. George had stopped moving. The blankets were not even rising and falling with his breath. Kent looked closer. He tried to locate a pulse, but found nothing. He ran for help.
    A couple of days later, Randy Durham was seated in class in the middle of a lecture. The commandant of the school poked his head into the room and motioned to
Randy to come take a phone call. Colonel Ron Peoples, head of operations for George’s mission, was on the line. Randy learned that George was dead and that Liz wanted him to escort the body back to Texas.
    It took a little luck, some fancy footwork and a highranking officer to get the security clearance to allow Randy to fly to the mission location. But by Sunday he was on his way. When he arrived, he found the letter George was writing to him still attached to the writing pad in the middle of the desk.
    Randy was not allowed to contact George’s family until he landed at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. There he called George Ratliff, Sr., and gave him an estimated time of arrival.
    Randy escorted George’s casket by land to Philadelphia, where he boarded a commercial flight bound for Hobby Airport in Houston. Randy followed the hearse to Bay City in a rented car and helped carry his friend into the mortuary.
    Michael Peterson escorted the grieving widow and her small daughters to the States for the funeral. Many thought it odd that Patty Peterson—Liz’s best friend—was not there by her side. Again and again, Mike told anyone who would listen that George had died without a will. The finances were screwed up, and Liz couldn’t handle it. He would have to straighten it all out for her.
    George’s casket was open for the viewing the night before the funeral. A distraught Liz refused to attend, claiming childhood trauma as her reason. When she was a young girl, she said, she was forced to kiss a dead grandmother in a coffin. She could not bear to see another dead person.

    On October 27, 1983, the funeral began as an opencasket service, but when Liz arrived, that changed. Randy nodded to the honor guard from Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio and they closed the coffin at his command. A devastated Liz went through the motions of the service with a numb mind and a shredded heart. Mourners accompanied the casket to Cedarvale Cemetery, a Bay City landmark since 1896.
    Her mother and her sisters offered to join her in Texas for the funeral. Because of all the uncertainty about the timing of the arrival of George’s body, the smallness of the rural Ratliff home and the lack of any nearby hotels, Liz discouraged them. She visited her family after the services and before her return to Germany.
    At Margaret’s house, Liz’s sadness was so palpable, it weighed on everyone like a shroud of lead. Her sisters spent hours talking with her, comforting her and trying to bear some of her burden.
    One evening, to distract her, they went out to a club for dinner. “If George were here tonight,” she said, “he would order a beer.” Then she ordered one and placed it by the empty space at the table.
    After dinner, the group who was performing asked Liz to come up and play a song. Liz took Margaret with her and mounted the stage. Liz played the guitar and both women sang “Donna Donna,” an old Joan Baez song. For that brief interlude, the veil lifted from Liz. And she