Thoughts at a funeral for a stranger

"matheson" wrote in message ...
Funny thing about that, Art.

I buried a lot of friends in my 26 + years in the Air Force, and always felt
that the turn out was more for the living than for the dead. There is
something about the military fraternity that does that to you. Read the
first chapter of "The Right Stuff".
Snip:

Yes. You may not know him personally, but he was a brother (now,
sister too) in arms. You know what he was like. He would have been a
friend had you know him. One you could borrow from or lend money too
in case of need.
At R-G AFB in Kansas City we were requested to perform a missing man
flyby for a man killed in Nam back in the early 60's. We didn't know
him, didn't know his family - and now never would. We took off in our
Deuces and made the mission -weather was not good but we made it -
because he was one of us. Later I led one for a very close friend;
left the range early to go over the Base Chapel right on time. Your
comrades and their families form one huge family. Even now, thirty
five years later, I get e-mails from men I served with in SEA. I was
in eleven fighter squadrons and as a result have something like 300
'brothers'. And the loss of any of them was and is a grievous loss. I
might add that the primary reason my wife and I stayed in the military
was the friendships formed and the mutual trust we experienced in the
three years I had to serve after flying school. We both knew we'd
never experience such wide-spread mutual acceptance in civilian life.
We have good friends locally now in retirement but they number in the
tens whereas in the USAF they numberd in the hundreds.
Walt BJ