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| James L. Burke, a retired Army colonel who served in combat during World War II and Vietnam, sits at the gravesite of his wife, WWII veteran Mary Burke, on Monday at the Post Cemetery on Fort Huachuca. (Mark Levy-Herald/Review) |
Posted on 05/30/2006 7:49:08 PM PDT by SandRat
FORT HUACHUCA — James L. Burke sat in his wheelchair.
The retired Signal Corps colonel wept, wiping his eyes with a handkerchief held in his right hand. With his left hand he patted the top of the tombstone on which the name of Mary E. Burke had been inscribed.
Mary, his wife, died in 2002.
Monday, the 87-year-old Burke, who served in combat in World War II and in Vietnam, was at the Fort Huachuca Cemetery visiting the grave of his wife.
He met Mary in Hawaii during World War II, when she was an Army nurse, daughter Bridget Burke said as she watched her dad’s personal pain unfold.
The death of her mother took her father’s wife away after many years of marriage, she said.
“It was just shy of 60 years,” she said.
Although he now lives in Tucson, the retired colonel was assigned to the fort twice during his military career.
Occasionally, the sounds of his sobbing were loud, the tears flowing even faster, as he continued to rub his hand over the marker.
It was a veteran honoring not only his wife, but a veteran as well.
The post cemetery is a place many people took time to visit the graves of family and friends before the annual Memorial Day Observance was held.
More than 600 attended the event and heard Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast urge them to honor America’s veterans always.
In the historic final resting place are the remains of soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, Coast Guardsmen, as well as early pioneers and civilians who help establish the fort in the late 1800s, she said.
“We must make sure Memorial Day is not forgotten,” said Fast, who commands the Intelligence Center and the fort. “We are here to honor those who died.”
This year’s observance on the fort was listed as a “Tribute to Our Military Intelligence and Signal Soldiers Who Have Made the Ultimate Sacrifice in the Global War on Terrorism.”
Fast noted the fort is the home to many intelligence and signal soldiers, as the post is where GIs training in the intelligence arena go to school and where Signal Corps soldiers have a large presence, through the Network Enterprise Technology Command and the 11th Signal Brigade.
“Today our concerns are immediate as well as reflective,” Fast said. “Rather than focusing solely on past sacrifices, we have to also face the reality of on-going losses from our war on terrorism.”
According to recent news reports, 2,467 members of America’s armed forces have been died in Iraq, including one yet-to-be-identified soldier killed when a car bomb exploded Monday in Iraq.
Arizona’s Iraqi war dead totals 57 of which four have a Cochise County connection. They are:
*Spc. Issac Campoy of Douglas.
*1st Sgt. Bobby Mendez of Sierra Vista.
*Sgt. Michael M. Merila of Sierra Vista.
*Chief Warrant Officer Christopher Nason of Fort Huachuca.
Fast remarked that the post cemetery holds the remains of active duty, National Guard, and reserve forces, those who were volunteers, draftees, short-term enlistees and careerists.
The general quoted former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, who made what she called relevant comments about the contributions of America’s soldiers.
“Willingly and without hesitation they demonstrate their profound and abiding devotion to this nation. On our behalf, they take risks, they go into harm’s way, they shed their blood — prepared to give their lives, if necessary — and some have paid that price to preserve peace and freedom and our way of life. They continue to make incredible contributions and even more incredible sacrifices,” Fast said were the words of Shinseki.
The post is part of where America’s armed forces lie in a peaceful and honored death, she said.
Initially the cemetery was located at the entrance to the fort, where those arriving for duty in the late 1880s would see it, but now it is “at the end of the post,” she said.
The cemetery was established in 1877, and it was relocated in 1883.
The old cemetery sits in a grove of trees, where cool breezes flow, as birds chirp.
From the first soldier to be buried on the fort — Pvt. Thomas P. Kelly of B Troop, 6th U.S. Cavalry, who died just before Christmas in 1877 — to those who will fill in the dwindling space of the graveyard, what exists on the post is a hallowed spot and worthy of President George W. Bush’s call for a national moment of remembrance, as Monday was designated, Fast said.
Memorial Day had its beginnings as Decoration Day when Gen. John A. Logan, commander of the Grand Army of the Republic called upon veterans of the Civil War to remember those who died in during what was called “the late rebellion.”
At Monday’s service, Betty M. Gripp, the Department of Arizona Veterans of Foreign Wars Junior Vice Commander, read Logan’s General Order 11, calling for a time to honor the war dead.
The Monday ceremony ended with the firing of a 21-rifle volley, with the 24 mournful notes of Taps played by an Army bugler.
Soon the quiet sacred grounds were full of the noise of a 21-gun salute coming from howitzers on the fort’s Reservoir Hill, echoing off the Huachuca Mountains until the final one rumbled into silence.
Herald/Review senior reporter Bill Hess can be reached at 515-4615 or by e-mail at bill.hess@svherald.com.
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| James L. Burke, a retired Army colonel who served in combat during World War II and Vietnam, sits at the gravesite of his wife, WWII veteran Mary Burke, on Monday at the Post Cemetery on Fort Huachuca. (Mark Levy-Herald/Review) |
BTTT
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