Local News

Wednesday, Nov. 11, 1998

Taps: A salute to honor, sacrifice

Bugle call offers closure for grieving

By STEPHANIE L. JORDAN
Staff Writer

   Their stories are of battles in countries far away -- but each hits close to home.
   A bugler stands aside from a group of uniformed men in the rain, sun, cold or heat. He raises the instrument to his lips, takes a deep breath and begins.
   For retired Marine Gunnery Sgt. Adan Alaniz of Corpus Christi, the 60 seconds it took him to play Taps at Clarence Brown's funeral seemed to last forever.
   "Play Taps for me," the tall, gentle man had asked of Alaniz before he went to Vietnam.
   "I can still see his son out of the corner of my eye saluting his dad's coffin. His family crying. I know they say there's closure with Taps, but not for this man."
   Brown, a Marine recruiter with Alaniz, was killed on Feb. 22, 1968, when his Jeep hit a land mine near Da Nang.
   In all, Alaniz has played Taps for hundreds of funerals, 32 of them for Marines he had recruited.
   "It's got a lot of meaning when you play them for someone you recruited," Alaniz said. "It's not that you feel guilty about it, it's that you know you played a part in helping them do what they really wanted to do -- fight for their country. They believed in that, which is why they joined, and some of them didn't even last six months over there. I see them as they were when the came to me -- all smiles. And so young."
   The mournful bugle tune will be played at some Veterans Day events in Corpus Christi this week. First by the Veterans Band of Corpus Christi at VFW Post 2397, 4441 Ayers St., at 10:30 a.m. today and again at Rose Hill Memorial Park, 2371 Comanche St., for a memorial service for black veterans at 1 p.m. today.
   

To honor fallen comrades

   In 1862, Army Gen. Daniel Butterfield wrote Taps to improve morale after a bloody Civil War battle at Gaines' Mill near Richmond, Va.
   Butterfield had been seriously injured during a seven-day battle with Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's troops. On one of the nights during the battle, Butterfield, who was also a musician, began turning over phrases in his mind to express the mood that had settled over his troops.
   To honor his fallen comrades, he revised an earlier bugle call into the 24 notes that make up the melody and ordered his bugler, Oliver Wilcox Norton, to play the song, according to information from Arlington National Cemetery.
   Soon it became the melody played to signal lights out, and although it still does, it is also common at memorial ceremonies.
   "If you look around while Taps is playing, what's on a veteran's face is this nostalgic look," says Harry Alfeo of Port Aransas, a Marine veteran of the Korean War and a Silver Star recipient. "That's because what I see is all the buddies I lost over there as they were in 1952 and they never got the chance to grow old. I can still hear the laughter. I can still hear the screams. Is there life after death? I think there is -- if you believe in memories."
   

Saddening reminder

   Former Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Harry Ogg knows why the song has stayed on his mind for more than 50 years.
   As an 18-year-old recruit, Ogg and his friend Jake Jablonski were stationed in Hawaii on a fleet tanker that provided fuel to other ships. They lived mostly along Battleship Row in Pearl Harbor. Jablonski cut Ogg's hair. Ogg let Jablonski tag along when he went shopping. They were fast friends.
   "How fortunate we felt to survive Pearl Harbor being bombed," said the 76-year-old. But after the Dec. 7, 1941, bombing, Ogg was transferred to the mainland and Jablonski went to the Battle of the Coral Sea. He died there and his body was never recovered.
   "That song is so saddening," Ogg said. "I've seen it played at a lot of services, but none like when I went to his memorial service with his parents in Newark. I think about him still."
   

Too many at once

   Alfeo remembers being moved by Taps not because of one death, but the sheer numbers of his comrades who didn't make it home from Korea.
   While in camp one day, he watched as another outfit paid tribute to its dead. The bodies of those killed had been sent back to the States, so the Marines used sand bags to represent the soldiers.
   Each man's buddy stood over a sand bag while the battalion commander called out the names of the dead. One after another, the buddies answered with "Here, Sir!," attached their bayonets to their rifles, drove them into the ground, and placed their helmets on their rifles.
   "We had seen casualties before but not this many," said Alfeo, who served with the 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division.
   "When someone dies it's not like in the movies where they say `Tell my mom I love her.' There's just so many of them that go at the same time."
   

Farewell to good friends

   For retired Air Force Lt. Col. Paul Dwyer, 62, Taps brings a mix of emotions starting with his days as a Boy Scout, when Taps signaled the day's end.
   But after attending funerals for many friends, it's hard to hear without a rush of emotion.
   "It's a farewell to a good friend," Dwyer said. "And it's a pleasant farewell, but it's a heartbreak, too."
   Dwyer lost one of his best friends during a training accident in 1958. Many died during training accidents, he said.
   "Then the planes got better, safer, sturdier, but the Vietnam War broke out and they started to die all over again."
   Col. Gregory Maisel, Marine commanding officer of Marine Aviation Training Support Group, said he lost a good friend to an aircraft crash in Grenada. Patrick Giguere's Cobra helicopter was shot down when he flew in to draw ground fire away from another aircraft trying to retrieve wounded soldiers.
   The other helicopter made it safely to the wounded, but Giguere never made it home to see the birth of his first child. After a memorial service on the flight deck of a ship, Maisel was asked to write a letter to Giguere's parents telling them what kind of Marine he was.
   "Taps for us and as a unit, is a tradition, and it's closure for everybody,' Maisel said. "But when you hear it, it brings back all those guys like Pat. It seals the moment for everybody when they stop to honor the dead."
   Staff writer Stephanie L. Jordan can be reached at 886-3724 or by e-mail at jordans@scripps.com
   You may listen to a MIDI version of "Taps" by clicking here, courtesy of the Boy Scouts of America.

Post your comments on this story in our forums.

---

  © 1998 Corpus Christi Caller Times, a Scripps Howard newspaper. All rights reserved.