Bridgeport Memorial Service

We held a memorial service out at Bridgeport, CA a few days after the accident that took the lives of seven of our Marines. Due to the lack of computer time, I had to write out my comments and as tends to happen Mr. Murphy showed up and the motivated Marines that immediately returned the podium to its rightful place removed my notes with said podium. So I had to wait for the DVD to transcribe what I said that evening and today with NMCI down for the count I had the opportunity to listen and type at the same time. Below is what I said in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy and sets the stage for what I said last week at the public memorial service. I publish these remarks today as the families of 1/9 were not afforded the opportunity to attend this service and may never get their hands on one of the DVDs.

What now? Other than why, that is probably the most frequent question I hear and the one that is probably the most prominent on the mind of everyone in this hangar. Where do we go from here? What do we do? What do we say to our friends, the families, to each other? This is my take. We get through this and we go on together. But that is easier said than done. So, what now?

First, we remember. We come together tonight and hear stories that remind us of the treasures that we lost. We go to an airport and help our brothers start their long journey home. We laugh and joke about them over a beer. But we must remember that we can never drink Monday night away. It will always be with us so we remember together than to attempt to forget alone. We also need to remember the heroic acts of people sitting with us tonight and people in hospital rooms in Reno. They saved lives.

We heal together. Remembering allows space for our emotions to run. Talking together eases our pain and soothes the wounds. You do not need me or the OSCAR to heal. But if you need to talk with one of us, I am always here for you. As the pain fades, we can acknowledge what happened and then we can see the moments of beauty among the chaos and carnage. I knew this battalion had started to heal at about 1300 on Tuesday. When I saw a crowd gathering and I thought it was the First Sergeants giving a brief about the movement plan to get on the buses. As I walked up I saw it wasn’t a First Sergeant led brief, actually no one was talking. People were walking up and putting stuff on the hillside. As I got closer I saw that the 81’s platoon had started a memorial of rocks they had written on. By the time I got there people were putting their ranks on the memorial. I have told everyone that at that moment, I knew we were going to get through this together. This kind of healing lets us tell the stories of Ripp, Josh, Joshua, Rog, David, Mason and Billy.

And we live. We honor our fallen by living a full and vibrant life. WE let their stories meld into our stories and we carry on their dreams. WE make their families ours and incorporate them into our lives. We don’t let defeat us. We show death that it is not worth being our enemy. Because life is our friend. Death pisses us off, so we fight death by helping others to live it. Live the life those we send off on the angel flight wants us to live. If that guides us the memory of Josh, Joshua, Mason, Rog, David, Billy and Ripp will never be forgotten.