For crews at Dover, Memorial Day is every day

[unhappycamper]

For crews at Dover, Memorial Day is every day
By Wade Malcolm - The (Wilmington, Del.) News Journal
Posted : Sunday May 30, 2010 17:14:13 EDT

DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. — The chaplain was right, Linda Shea remembers thinking.

“The first thing you’re going to see is the flag,” she had told her.

She recalls scanning the dreary surroundings: The gray C-17 cargo plane. The muted fatigues of the stoic, somber military personnel. The box-shaped van — plain white, like a bread truck without the logo. All of it set against the misty, gray weather of an early morning in mid-May.

Her eyes locked on the red, white and blue cloth wrapped around the metal case that held the body of her son, 21-year-old Cpl. Kurt S. Shea of Frederick, Md.

The chaplain’s warning hardly helped. Flanked by her husband on the right and her daughter on the left, she wept on the tarmac at Dover Air Force Base.

[TexasObserver]

1. The older I get, the more I hate seeing dead soldiers coming home.

I hate it because the older I get, the more I know how unnecessary the losses are. If they were really necessary to protect true American interests, that would be fine, but it's not that way.