Growing numbers of Vietnam veterans are being laid to rest in recent years, and in many cases their families are attending military funerals. Every eligible veteran can receive military funeral honors.

Among military burial traditions, the 21-gun salute is the oldest. In the 14th century, warships and shore forces fired off their guns to show that their weapons were empty and they were friendly.

Also of artillery origin, dating at least to the 18th century, is the custom of carrying a head of state or high-ranking military official on a two-wheeled horse-drawn caisson.

Taps (referring to a soft triple beat on the drum) was composed by Union Brig. Gen. Daniel Adams Butterfield in 1862 as a quieter substitute for gunfire to signal the end of the day’s activities—and later adopted to a soldier’s final rest.

Airman 1st Class Breanna Brown plays taps on National POW/MIA Recognition Day at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, Sept. 20, 2019. (U.S. Air Force)
F-15E Strike Eagles from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina, perform a “missing man” formation over Arlington honoring Korean War ace and Vietnam veteran Maj. Gen. Frederick “Boots” Blesse on March 22, 2013. (U.S. Air Force)
Marines render a three-volley salute at Arlington on March 13, 2019, to honor Lt. Gen. Leo Dulacki, a veteran of World War II, Korea and Vietnam. (U.S. Marine Corps)
Crewmen of aircraft carrier USS Midway conduct a burial in the South China Sea during the summer of 1965 when two pilots were killed on the flight deck as they landed. (U.S. Navy/ Patrick Althizer)
Bouala Chansombath of Oklahoma City, a veteran of the CIA-supported “Secret Army” in Laos, offers a prayer at the plaque dedicated to the unit during a memorial and wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington on May 10, 2013. The Secret Army fought Pathet Lao communists trying to overthrow the Laotian government. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
A Mass is celebrated at Simon and Jude Cathedral in Phoenix for the interment of 1969 Medal of Honor recipient Lance Cpl. Jose Francisco Jimenez on Jan. 17, 2017. (U.S. Air Force)
Marine Corps Col. Steven Weintraub bids a final goodbye to Medal of Honor recipient Jose Francisco Jimenez on Jan 17, 2017. (U.S. Marine Corps)
Family members hold onto their folded flags as the remains of six airmen are laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia on July 9, 2012. The airmen, missing since their Douglas AC-47 Spooky gunship crashed in Laos on Christmas Eve 1965, were identified through dental records and other circumstantial evidence. (U.S. Air Force)
The cremated remains of eight unclaimed veterans are interred at the State Veterans Cemetery in Middletown, Connecticut,
on Oct. 1, 2021. (Connecticut Army National Guard)
The 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard) Caisson Platoon and an armed forces body bearer team transport the casket of Gen. Colin Powell to his grave site at Arlington on Nov. 5, 2021. (Veterans of Foreign Wars)
A ceremonial flag is prepared for the family of Gen. John K. Davis, 20th assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, at Arlington on May 6, 2021. (U.S. Marine Corps)

A 20th century tradition among Air Force personnel is the “Missing Man’” formation, in which a “finger four” flight of warplanes approaches the burial site from the south and the second element’s leader breaks formation to climb westward, into the sunset. The Royal Air Force used a flyover at the funeral of British King George V in 1936, and the U.S. Army Air Corps used a similar flyover at the funeral of Maj. Gen. Oscar Westover in 1938. The flyover became standard after the April 1954 funeral of Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg.

A universal honor in American military funerals is the presentation of the flag that draped the coffin before burial. It is folded 13 times (for the 13 original states in 1776) into a triangular shape and given to the nearest kin.