Wounded Warrior March
The Wall Street Journal gives a peek into the Pentagon’s own program to honor wounded veterans and their families;
Cpl. Kenny Lyon’s mother pushed his wheelchair down a narrow Pentagon hallway, crying as she listened to the applause.
Hundreds of Defense Department employees lined the corridor, cheering for Cpl. Lyon and the other wounded military personnel who walked or rolled past. Some of them patted Cpl. Lyon on the shoulder, while others shook his hand or leaned in to hug his mother, Gigi Windsor.
“I was really humbled by it because I didn’t do anything special,” says Cpl. Lyon, a 22-year-old Marine who lost a leg in a mortar attack near Fallujah. “I went to Iraq to do a job, and I got injured and actually couldn’t do it. So why was I getting honored?”
Cpl. Lyon was taking part in a little-known event called the Wounded Warrior March, which brings military personnel who suffer serious injuries in Iraq or Afghanistan to the Pentagon for a parade unlike any other.
The events, held roughly every six weeks, are notable for their simplicity. No speeches are given, no dignitaries march alongside the veterans and cameras are banned. The parades are closed to the public, except for friends and relatives of the injured soldiers and Marines taking part. Military officials don’t tout the program to the press.
It’s an example of the ways the military has chosen to honor its own out of public view.
These are the service members that Winter Soldiers II seeks to disparage – both the recovering wounded and the folks who line the halls and applaud them. The folks who are doing the job, quietly paying tribute to the heroes.
The parades also show the evolution of military honors for the dead and wounded. In the Vietnam War, soldiers and Marines wrote the names of fallen colleagues on their helmets and uniforms. Today, some wear bracelets engraved with the names and nicknames of colleagues killed in the two war zones, while others have the information tattooed on their arms and chests.
Far from the front lines, the Wounded Warrior events give employees at the Pentagon an opportunity to pay their respects to soldiers and Marines they have never met.
“When these boys came back, they went straight into hospitals, so they missed out on the homecoming ceremonies we all came back to,” says Maj. Zachary Miller, an operations officer for the Army. “This is a way of giving that back to them.
Those selfless American who stand in the breach so we can live our lives – the ones who make the decisions, and the ones who carry out their orders – meet in a windowless hallway far from the prying eyes of the public they serve.
Category: Support the troops
