The Blue Bark Mystery (minicast)

Welcome to another mini-podcast of A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

One of the wonderful things about doing a radio show like this is that we always end up talking about so much more than just vocabulary and grammar.

And sometimes our discussions wander into topics that are extremely sensitive.

We got a call like that recently.

A fellow asked a question about a term used in connection with deceased members of the military.

And his question was straightforward and respectful.

But this topic was so sensitive, especially in a time of war, that we debated about whether to air it at all.

But in the end, the term itself was so intriguing, and its etymology was such a mystery, that we decided it was worth inviting you to ponder it as well.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Good afternoon.

My name is Bill Roberts.

I have a question about some terminology I’ve come across in the moving and storage industry.

What do you do in the moving and storage industry?

Well, we ship people nationally, locally, internationally, and we often do business with the military.

And when we get a military order, occasionally the words blue bark will be associated with the order.

And whenever we see that, we know that it’s a deceased military member.

That’s B-A-R-K?

Yes.

And it doesn’t necessarily mean, you know, combat death or anything like that.

Over the years, it’s been associated with car accidents or shipboard accidents or health issues for any active-duty personnel.

And, you know, they always give us, the military will give us a heads-up to let us know that we’re dealing with a shipment for a deceased member.

Wait, it’s their belongings or the deceased person themselves?

It’s their belongings.

Very often we’ll be shipping them back to their home of record or to where their family is now living.

So, Bill, are you based in San Diego, by the way?

Yeah, I’m actually in El Cajon right now.

Oh, okay.

And so how, in conversation, or how would that come up?

Well, basically it’s in the comments of the order.

When they issue us the order, they say, you know, we have a shipment that needs to go back to, say, Rhode Island, and this is a blue bark shipment.

And, you know, it’s in bold letters because, you know, obviously the military takes special care when they’re dealing with a situation like this.

And we’ve always assumed that it had something to do with an old sailing term.

I guess that’s my assumption based on the word bark, you know, from the sailing connotation.

But no one has ever been able to give me any kind of an explanation as to where the origin of the phrase came from.

Wow. Well, that seems plausible, but I have to confess, I have no idea. Do you, Grant?

I have a little bit of an idea, but you’re right.

It’s definitely, as I like to call it, origin unknown.

I have been able to trace it back definitely as far as 1970, where it appears in a Department of Defense glossary, and possibly as far back as 1961, but I wasn’t able to verify that source.

So it’s got a little bit of a history then.

We know it’s at least 36 years old.

As far as origins, the government and the military, they’re inscrutable.

There’s no telling how they came up with this codename.

It could be chosen at random.

You simply can’t tell.

Really?

They might even have chosen it in such a way as to obfuscate what was happening in there because you wouldn’t want it to be morbid really, and you kind of wouldn’t want it to be something that’s widely heralded.

I don’t think you would really want to call too much attention to these kind of shipments.

Yet they need special attention.

They do need special care to make sure they get there with some kind of sensitivity and maybe a sense of urgency as well.

There might be family members waiting on the other end.

Grant, it seems so evocative and almost poetic.

It’s hard for me to imagine that it would have been just some randomly chosen term.

I thought it might even be an acronym or something like that.

Oh, that’s a thought.

I didn’t see that.

You know, it’s littered throughout a wide variety of DOD documents.

Many third-party shipping companies that work with the military also, they have this in their own documentation.

They often describe the procedures and the care that one will take with blue bark shipments.

But what I did find, actually, the blue bark is a little more general.

Sometimes it refers to flights or taken by family members who were flying to the services for a deceased military member.

So it’s got a little more general use than that.

But in all cases, blue bark is somehow attached to the death of somebody who has served in the U.S. Military.

Actually, I should say it is also used – at least one source tells me that it’s used in Canada as well.

I always assumed it was something that was much older than the 70s.

I’ve been in the industry, oh, since the mid-’70s myself, and I always had the impression that it was a long-standing thing even before that.

Well, that’s good information.

Like I said, I’m pretty sure, I don’t want to be 100% certain, but it does go back to at least 1961.

So your confidence that it was in good, strong use in the mid-’70s helps.

But, Bill, my hunch would have been the same thing.

I mean, sometimes people attribute way too many etymologies to things nautical, but it really does sort of evoke this really old sailing era thing, I think.

The idea of the dead traveling across the river Styx in a boat, something like that?

Well, my dad was a salty old sailor, and I asked him, and I thought for sure he would know what it was all about, and he didn’t have any idea either.

But he was familiar with the term?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

He was a career Navy man, and he had heard it before, but, again, he never had any idea where it came from either.

Yeah, Bill, this is one for my permanent file, and these are the ones that I go back to on a fairly regular basis and say, let me just see if there’s been anything new come up about this term.

So this one will go in that list that I check fairly regularly.

Oh, great.

And if I find anything new out, I’ll be sure to mention it on the show.

Oh, terrific. I’ll be watching for it, listening for it.

Okay, thanks, Bill.

Okay, well, thank you.

Thank you, Bill. Bye-bye.

So long.

You know, Martha, that question about blue bark is a great example of what so often happens in our work.

It’s the sound of etymologists bumping up against a wall, where we have to admit we just don’t know the answer.

I’m hoping that maybe once this podcast goes online, someone will contact us with more information about the term.

And most likely, that person won’t be a linguist or a lexicographer.

It’ll be someone with direct experience in the military.

That’s the kind of evidence that’s like gold to me and those of us in this business who chase down words for a living.

So if you know something about this term, or if you have a linguistic question of your own, of course, please write to us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Or leave us a phone message anytime.

The number’s 1-877-929-9673.

And be sure to drop by the A Way with Words website, where you can join in discussions about the world of words.

Just point your browser to waywordradio.org.

Hope you’ll join us again next time.

I’m Martha Barnette.

I’m Grant Barrett.

Thanks for listening to A Way with Words.

Thank you.