Marine/Simi Valley cop down
Spockgirl sends us a link to the news that a Simi Valley cop who also became a Marine was laid low by a pair of insurgent bombs in Helmand Province this week;
Joshua Cullins didn’t deliberate long on what job he’d tackle when he joined the Marine Corps.
“He wanted to do what he could do to help save lives,” said his friend and fellow Marine Joseph Seymour. “The one thing at that time of the war that was the most imminent threat was IEDs,” short for improvised explosive devices, or roadside bombs.
So Cullins, of Simi Valley, learned the dangerous world of diffusing explosive devices. The staff sergeant dismantled countless bombs during his tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, all with a big smile on his face.
“You could put him in the desert in the worst conditions and he would find something to smile about,” Seymour remembers.
The bombs were paired so that the second one would get the folks who showed up to investigate the first. Thank you, Joshua, you’re job is done now.
Category: Terror War
My husband tells me that the police have a ceremony that is performed at the funeral of an officer killed in the line of duty. I think he referred to it as the “final radio call.” Three times the officer’s call-sign is announced, as though by the base to an officer in the field…and the silence after each call is allowed to hang in the air, as the officer will never answer his call-sign again…
As beautiful as military ceremony is for fallen soldiers, I can see where this ceremony would also be appropriate, for one fallen who is both police officer and Marine…
PN, yes we do. Each service, in it’s own way, is beautiful, and heart-wrenching. Some police departments do it over a PA at the funeral, some do it on the police radio at the conclusion of the funeral.