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During the mid sixties, I played in both the Fifth Army Band at Ft Sheridan Illinois and then the 74th Army band at Ft. Harrison Indiana. While in the 74th Army band, I sometimes went out on 'bugle jobs' to play 'taps' at funerals even though my primary MOS was as a tuba player.

At each funeral, we had seven riflemen who fired their rifles in three vollies for the salute and then taps was played.

At one funeral on a very cold day in mid winter, on the first volly, six rifles fired and one misfired. On the second volly, the rifle that previously misfired successfully fired, but ALL the others misfired. For the third volly, it was a bunch of random shots as everyone had trouble firing their weapons.

And then, it was my turn. I unfortunately started out on the wrong note, too high, and everything went downhill from there.

I occasionally went out with Marine honor guards and on one job, they told me about one funeral that they were on where it was raining all day. The Marine folding the flag slipped and fell into the grave under the casket carrying the flag with him. He had to be helped out of the grave covered with mud.

The Marine folding the flag slipped and fell into the grave under the casket carrying the flag with him. He had to be helped out of the grave covered with mud.

Lol, guess he had a bad day.

The summer of 1975 I was a member of a USAF Honor Guard and at a funeral at one of the cemeteries in New Orleans the ground underneath me gave way and I went into the grave. Luckily the other five's ground held and were able to set the casket onto the stand. We kept our composure and I crawled out and took my place and everything went on as planned. The M-16s' were notorious for malfunctioning and at the 21 gun salutes many times half fired the second and third volleys. Placing a casket in the top of some of the mausoleums in New Orleans created many problems as to how to get the casket placed right with smart military action and practicality. We came close to watching a casket slide back off the top at one funeral but lucky for us with the help of the officer and the two guards that accompanied the flagbearers we got the casket back to the top. New Orleans is always muddy and the graves in the ground unstable and the mausoleums treacherous. I could write a book on the things that happened.

During this week's activities, I had some questions about our military bands ... all of which performed superbly!

Is one permanently assigned to bands or is a band a routine assignment interspersed between other duty assignments? Are members constantly being rotated in and out of bands or is the membership fairly stable over a period of time?

I have the same type of question related to the choral groups.

All of the military participation in the funeral activities was just magnificent ... the bands and choral groups, the honor guards, and all, up to and including the young man who held the umbrella for Mrs. Reagan on Friday ... and Major General Jackman, who escorted Mrs. Reagan was just wonderful.