7800 burials per year. Yup, true enough. But it is slowing down. We’ve gotten past the peak of the WW II crowd which was happening in the 90’s. I well remember the cemetery folks saying they were burying 1,000 per day. So many they couldn’t provide buglers and had to use recordings to play TAPS. Remember we had something over 12.5 million men under arms just in WW II so sending them off properly is quite a piece of work.
Family members who passed back in the 70’s got the whole Maryann: Bugler, color guard, volley, and a uniformed chaplain. But the ones who went in the 90’s got a flag and a tune on a Walkman.-——way different.
I started noticing the change of pace in the 70’s when the occasional Old War Horse would bring a “bring back” souvenir into the shop and would want to sell it so’s I could find it a good home. I always paid them what they asked. They would always explain that they didn’t have family or family who could handle it. Some of that stuff was dangerous in un-skilled hands. Some of it needed “papers.” Some of it needing “de-watting.” Whenever I did pass something on I always relayed the story that went with it.
Over the years I’ve heard some heckuva stories. And It’s like Audie Murphy said about his own movie “To Hell and Back”: We couldn’t tell it like it really was ‘cause no one would believe it.
RIP all of ‘em.
“We couldn’t tell it like it really was ‘cause no one would believe it.”
Saving Private Ryan rendered more realitic on the cruel sacrifice, because the blood spilt and the Cost in men was the entire story.
Something about confining that saga to the astonishing sacrifice of so many, offered for one man, who himself had lost his own brothers in the same war.
What a royal, loyal burden of Honor Private Ryan would carry, for the rest of his fine life.
I know that story was loosely based on the Sullivan’s and the Sullivan Act.😣
🙏 RIP
Thank you!
Audie Murphy
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The hero of my childhood memories...💓