Sent over the West Point Parents Forum and Printed With Permission of the sender Charles E. Rittenburg, his son is a junior at Norwich, a private military college and an M1A1 tank crewman in the National Guard.
This came from a friend's USNA classmate, whose son is a Captain, USMC. He is a USMC engineer posted at the time to a billet in Illinois, but already now in IRAQ himself.
The text speaks for itself. Whatever honors are reported here are certainly due to any of our service members who were lost in connection with Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Mike
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Date: Fri, 04 Apr 2003 00:04:29 -0600
From: BruzzaJP
Sir,
As you can see, I have cc'ed a lot of people on this because I wanted to get the word out as quickly as possible. 1stSgt Berg, GySgt Bontkowski and I went to St. Louis International airport tonight to meet the body of Corporal Evan James when he came in on an American Airlines flight.
When we found out the time and airline of his arrival, Gunny Bontkowski called the Airport Operations to arrange for us to be on the tarmac to meet the body and put it in the hearse. What happened next would choke up the hardest Marine.
We arrived at the airport and it seemed like every airport cop employed there was around to make sure that we got on the tarmac. The plane pulled up and the casket (in the travel dunnage) came down the ramp and we loaded it into the hearse. As we left the tarmac with an airport police escort, the gate guards saluted. We then picked up our escorts from the Missouri State Police.
We passed by the gate of the Missouri Air National Guard unit and their guards were rendering full honors to our convoy. The Airport police had blocked off ALL traffic in and out of the airport when we departed. The state troopers were in the lead and in trail. State troopers had also blocked off I-70 so our convoy would easily get on the highway. The troopers escorted the hearse to Hannibal, MO, where it crossed the state line into Illinois. At that point, the Illinois State Police took over the escort duties all the way to La Harpe, IL. The police captain of the airport police arranged all of this.
Gunny Bontkowski is getting names so that we can send them our humble thanks. Is there any way that LtGen McCarthy or Gen Hagee can send something once we get the names of the people in St. Louis that made these honors possible? They went well out of their way to honor a Marine they did not know from Adam. Words alone cannot express the pride, humility, and emotions that we felt for Cpl James and the Marine Corps.
Semper Fi,
Capt John Bruzza, USMC
