As two hundred citizens from the Shenandoah Valley stood outside holding American flags, the flag-draped coffin with the body of 24-year-old Army Spc. Brian Anderson, known locally as Bucky, was carried into Broadway High School’s packed gymnasium where he had graduated six years earlier.
It was a place Spc. Anderson had known well. He had excelled at sports in that school and was on the wrestling and football teams. He had been a two-time AA state champion in wrestling and earned All-American status in the Mid-Atlantic Wrestling Association Eastern Nationals. Later, while attending James Madison University in Harrisonburg, he was a member of their wrestling team for two years.
As a bagpipe played “Amazing Grace” and as temperatures outside hovered near 100 degrees on one of the hottest days so far this year, more than 1,000 people gathered to pay their respects and to honor a young man many did not know.
He was a hero who had died in Operation Enduring Freedom, the war in Afghanistan, only two months after arriving with the 10th Mountain Division out of Fort Drum, New York, when insurgents attacked his vehicle using an improvised explosive device (IED) on June 12.
The place Spc. Anderson died was a long way from the peaceful, green Shenandoah Valley that he loved, and his final resting place was in the Linville Creek Church cemetery in that beautiful Valley.
His family was presented the Purple Heart and Bronze Star to honor their son’s sacrifice. The Purple Heart is awarded to those who have been wounded or killed while serving with the U.S. military, and the Bronze Star is awarded to U.S. Armed Forces individuals for bravery, acts of merit, or meritorious service.
Even as this soldier was carried to his final resting place, controversy swirled around the general in charge of Afghanistan’s operation, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, over a Rolling Stone article that reported controversial and critical remarks from the General about President Barack Obama, the Commander-in-Chief over American military forces.
A meeting Wednesday at the White House determined Gen. McChrystal’s fate, removing him from command and replacing him with Gen. David Petraeus who had previously been in charge of U.S. military operations in Iraq. The United States is reportedly planning to withdraw forces from Afghanistan in 2011.
