In 2003, 30 years after they served together in the Vietnam War, former Navy Hospital Corpsman Richard "Doc" Shepherd re-unites with ex-Marines Sal and Mueller on a different type of mission: to bury Doc's son, a young Marine killed in the Iraq War. Doc decides to forgo burial at Arlington Cemetery and, with the help of his old buddies, takes the casket on a bittersweet trip up the East Coast to his home in suburban New Hampshire.