Corporal Buesing   by Henry Burt Stevens

On Thursday, March 27, 2003, The Charlotte SUN newspaper carried the color picture and story of Marine Lance Corporal Brian Rory Buesing, recently killed in the current Operation Iraqi Freedom started March 19.  As I stared into his eyes, I was taken back to his past and to my past.

For Brian Buesing's parents, family and friends, I suspect that their grief is only beginning. Their future will be forever marred by the pain of his death in Iraq.  Buesing is a hero now, but he will be remembered, though absent, every day, every family holiday, every picnic, and at every meal. There will always be an empty chair, a clean plate and shiny silverware which remain unused.

My past I remembered because I was a bugler in my small town of Orleans, Vermont, for the men who arrived home from WWII in caskets.

I was born in 1933 and started bugling for military funerals during the
years of 1944 to 1947, as bodies of those killed in the war were brought home.  The bodies of the men came in as they had left, by train, along tracks which ran through the center of our town.

I crossed the tracks by the railroad station every day on my way to school. If I saw a casket box on the station platform that had
come in on the early train I knew that I'd probably be called into the
principal's office that morning to get my school excuse for the funeral.

Military funerals are about the same today as they were back when I
was bugling.  Certainly the grief and sadness are the same.  I was
under the direction of the funeral director and the minister who would tell me where to stand.  I played taps after the musket volley by the honor guard had been fired.  I would wait until the last echo of gunfire, or approximately that long if it was raining and there was no echo.  When I finished playing taps slowly and reverently, my classmate Bob Gray, who was the second bugler, and had moved some 100 feet away before the funeral and was out of sight, played the echo taps.

People usually bore up well when I played taps, but after Bob played the echo taps there were hardly any dry eyes at all.

I urge all who can, to attend Buesing’s military funeral when he gets back, unless the family wishes you not to.  Military funerals, especially internments, taught me about the results of war on the families and friends of those killed in battle.  These lessons are a part of my past, and a sad part of the Buesing family’s future.  Let us hope someday future families may not have to learn these lessons I learned at the funerals of so many brave men.

By Henry Burt Stevens
6400 Taylor Rd Unit 108
Punta Gorda FL 33950
941 575 2470

Published in "The Chronicle" April 16, 2003 Barton VT