Burial Detail for a Great Friend

As the last few forlorn notes of Taps echoed over Blandford Cemetery, I was taken back to the mid-70s when I was the driver for a number of burial details while serving with the 82^nd Airborne.  We would pile into a pair of cars and hustle to the burial sites that were literally all over southern North Carolina and Northern South Carolina, anywhere within about 200 miles of Fort Bragg.

For days prior to the funeral, we would practice the moves, the stations, the playing of the bugle, and the firing of a 21-gun salute.  It was one of those duties that all troops make with respect.  We never knew who the person was that we were going to provide the military pomp for, but I do remember one being a Naval Captain and a few other Army officers and NCOs.

At the time, it never really meant much more than providing such an honor to someone who had spent a good portion of their lives supporting the American cause.  So, Monday, as I stood in the midst of hundreds of tombstones at the very far reaches of Blandford Cemetery, those haunting last notes rang through the air as I am sure they have done at many of the hundreds of gravesites surrounding us.

But this time was different.  This time we were burying someone I considered a friend.  We stood, six of us pall bearers, looking over the casket draped with Old Glory at a fair group of family and friends standing to see the last ethereal moments with Samuel Walter George.

I knew him as Walter, the name most people probably knew him by, although I am sure father, grandfather, husband, and, to me, friend were also part of his naming.  He had always been a bigger-than-life kind of man during the 25-odd years I knew him.  Not just because of his stature, but because of the way he handled himself as a consummate professional.

Carrying my corner of his casket to its final resting place was a huge honor.  As a fellow veteran, and for someone I truly admired, taking those final steps with him in hand is the kind of memory that doesn’t wash out with time, as most do.

The thing that really hit home for me was during the funeral at Small’s Funeral Home, when they were speaking about his life and the things he was involved in.  During that moment, they read a passage about George having been in the Battle of the Bulge.

To many of us, me included, the Battle of the Bulge is just an old war movie.  While I remember that movie, I thought we tend to forget that there were actual people who were involved in the “real action,” so to speak.  In many ways, the bulge was the last battle of the German soldiers during World War II.  From that point on, the Germans were driven back into their final surrender.

I would never have known my friend was involved in such a heroic battle, had it not be listed in his obituary.  Strange how we can know people for such a long time, and not know those memorable parts of their past that have drifted away with time.  And so, with a very heavy heart, I just would like to say farewell to George, a soldier, a father, a grandfather, and a husband:  goodbye friend, until we meet again.