To all,
Memorial day is fast approaching. This day honors those who have served their country. They didn't serve a private corporation. They weren't sacrificing for private money, goals or stocks. They served the country and the people who just happen to be citizens either by accident of birth or hard won choice. The even served those who aren't citizens of this country by trying to maintain Democracy and Freedom around the world.
These aren't my words. I wish I had this eloquence. I am not even sure if it is a true story as I got it forwarded to me some time ago. I think it is. Even if it is not, I have seen this ceremony and can attest to the sentiments involved.
To all Vets, living and gone.
<SALUTE>
A SOLDIER'S STORY Voice of the People - Chicago Tribune - 19 September 1999
DETROIT -
My brother, Bruce Turnbull, recently died in Germany. Bruce was a 1st Sergeant in the
United States Army. Bruce is survived by his wife and his 11-year-old son, our mother,
another brother and a gaggle of nephews and their wives.
We flew to Germany for the funeral. The next day the family filled up three station
wagons and we were driven to the training base near Nuremberg. Led by a military
police vehicle, we slowly moved through the streets of the base. Each time we passed a
group of soldiers, they snapped to attention and saluted. Conversation in the vehicles
slowed, then it stopped altogether. We moved around a great sweeping curve and the
parade ground stretched before us. Six hundred twenty men and women of the United
States Army stood, at solemn attention in immaculate uniforms, as far as the eye could
see. This was not our world. This was the holy world of 1st Sgt. Bruce Turnbull, 1st
Battalion, 4th Infantry Division, United States Army. And the soldiers had come to say
farewell to their own.
Bruce looked like a poster for today's Army. He was 6 foot 1, tan and about 180 pounds.
We all loved him. He was easy to love. He had a sense of humor that seemed to make
him irresistible to young people. Bruce got the youngest soldiers, he got the hard cases,
the lonely kids and the lost souls who, seemingly, didn't have anywhere else to go. They
went to Bruce. There wasn't a Christmas or a Thanksgiving we'd call, wherever he was
stationed, when there wasn't some new, gawky-as-a-chicken, 2nd Lieutenant from West
Point or Virginia Military Institute or Texas Christian University or the Big Ten, as part
of the gathering around the table.
For one week in Germany, we were honored by seeing the inside workings of the finest
and most feared fighting force that this world has seen, the best guarantee of peace that
world has. We are not at war right now and the soldiers, unless they are in your family,
are not particularly high on the interest level. But they are out there - in the tens of
thousands. We know when they fight in major engagements, but sometimes they fight in
nasty little skirmishes that the world doesn't hear about. And sometimes they die. When
soldiers die, the United States Army honors its dead. We didn't know that a few weeks
ago.
On the parade ground in Germany, the details of 1st Sgt. Turnbull's military life were
read out by his commanding officers and his fellow sergeants. Mute testimony to his
service was provided by his highly polished combat boots, his down-facing rifle with
bayonet mounted, his dog tags on the trigger guard, his black beret on the butt of the rifle.
There was the final roll call - four platoons singing out that they were present and
accounted for. The 5th platoon was my brother's. His name was shouted three times.
There was no answer. There was a 21-gun salute. Then the awesome finality of taps. First
Sgt. Turnbull's decorations were given to his wife and to his mother. There were many.
Wife and mother were each given United States flags, which had been draped over Bruce's
coffin. There was more, much more. There was insurance for his widow, education for his
child, moving expenses and a list of benefits that only the family and the Army will ever
know.
My brother was a soldier. He was a superb soldier, and he had the recognition of his men
and his officers and his government to prove it. But even if he had not been a superb
soldier, he was a soldier of the United States Army. I suddenly want you to know, with all
the passion of a country preacher, that our military forces take care of our country, and
our country takes care of its fighting men and women.
-Jim Turnbull
