By Paul Hendrickson | The Washington Post | November 12, 1998; Page A1
These old, old men, breasting their medals, lost in the castles of their memories and stories: Here they were yesterday, about 15 of them, game and proud old duffers, vets, in their seventies and eighties, in the 9 a.m. gloom and spitting rain. They were dressed up in their Legion hats and VFW blazers, dressed up in their Uncle Sam ties, trying to climb aboard -- sprightly or not so sprightly -- a Blue Bird bus at the U.S. Soldiers and Airmen's Home.
So that they could be conveyed by a driver through the gates and across town and over the river and onto the sacred ground of Arlington National Cemetery for an 11 a.m. Veterans Day Program to be attended by the president. Where there would be bands and guns and flags and pretty usherettes and all manner of speechifying ringing through the almost springlike November air.
Where indeed the clouds did part, as if just for these 15, and the sun did come out before the start of the ceremony. It was right and proper that this should have happened, for this was their day to be gloried, these vets, along with all the other hundreds of thousands of veterans in America who were being honored at Arlington and uncounted other memorial sites in the country.
The men aboard the bus were veterans of that time of carnage, World War II. Arlington Cemetery was the ground where most of them would one day lie, and they knew it -- but that didn't seem a thought to make them gloomy on the way over, quite the opposite. They appeared to be taking comfort in this idea, and finding ways to slip it into the conversation, obliquely or otherwise.
One man had hummed as he got aboard on his own power and staked out his seat about halfway down the aisle. Another had pulled a dime novel from his pocket and proceeded to settle quickly in. A third vet was in a wheelchair, and so the bus driver and another attendant had hoisted him in. They had locked his wheels to the floor of the bus. This soldier's name was William H. Ritchie, and he'd been with Patton. That's how he said it: "I was with Patton." It was a novel written in four words.
"Armored," he said, studying you with his good eye. His other eye was watery and part of it seemed not there at all. His hands were folded in his lap atop his trench coat. "Been to a lot of these Arlington ceremonies," the soldier said, and you could hear something else in it that was coming. "There's one I'm going to. But I know I'm not coming back from it." At this he let out a little heh-heh and looked up to make sure his joke had been recorded.
The bus was on North Capitol Street now, threading through late rush hour, rolling to its own inner rhythms. Each of the 15 had taken his own seat. The vets weren't talking to one another, they just rode. Several looked out the window, although most stared ahead.
It would have been possible to have stopped at any seat and gotten shards of histories, of unsung stories.
Here was John Lincoln Tuggle, 82, the name itself seeming its own small poem. He'd once been a machinist's mate in the Navy, having enlisted in '36, right out of CCC camp in Virginia, and to prove it, he fished out of his pocket a wad of clippings. "Here," he said. They were wonderfully creased, in the way of papers folded and unfolded countless times to be studied and mined for their interlinear truths.
In one clipping there was a picture of Tuggle, taken half a lifetime ago, with such a full head of fine black wavy hair. In 1945, his hometown paper, in Lynchburg, Va. -- the Daily Advance -- had written up the local son with dignity and probity, describing how the 26-year-old petty officer had been awarded two decorations for helping the great Gen. Douglas MacArthur escape via motor torpedo boat from Corregidor.
Tuggle spoke, not meanly, of "the Japs." He talked of places named Arora and Zamboango, which apparently is near a place called Pagadian. On Jan. 1, 1943, Tuggle married a beautiful Filipino girl, Esperanza. The name just glided off his tongue: Esperanza.
She died little more than a month ago. She was buried in Arlington on Oct. 7, he said. They had a family together, they had five decades of happiness together. "I met her in the jungles, running from the Japs," he said softly. "She didn't want to be captured, either. We just got talking."
One of the folded papers from his pocket was his official discharge, listing all his medals, listing his "PAID cash settlement." The amount, typed in so cleanly on the bottom of the form: $463.40.
John Lincoln Tuggle, who still has his hair, although no longer black, and whose diction has in it the lilt of the Virginia Piedmont, pulled from his pocket one more treasure: a snapshot of himself and Esperanza. He's in his full-dress blues. She has coils of coal-dark hair falling to her shoulders. They look so young. "First picture she ever had taken in America," he said, and then his voice broke just a little.
A couple seats away from Tuggle was Steve Chorey. He had so many medals on the left breast of his red VFW blazer that he seemed to be listing a little to that side. He was 24 years in the Army: World War II and Korea. On the right side of his blazer, he was wearing a marksman's medal. Hanging from this decoration, on tiny chains, were four small gray bars, each one emblazoned with "Machine Gun." He must've been a helluva shot.
"I'm now 86," he said. "Went in in '29, came out in '53. I gave two of my war medals to my nephews' daughters. I said the first one has a girl gets a medal and guess what, well, both 'em, two nephews' daughters, had girls, so I gave them both away." He cackled. Chorey could give a lot of medals away for the next couple of years and probably still show up at Arlington listing from his hardware.
He had thick hornrims. He wore brown gabardines stuffed in polished brown boots. As he spoke his left hand kneaded one leg of his trousers. "I got a good job after the war working at a steel plant in Lackawanna, New York," he said. "Twelve years. I worked there 12 years and had enough. I had my Army pension. Hey, I've had my Army pension 45 years now, can you beat it?"
An interviewer asked why his compatriots seemed to be riding mostly in silence. "They more or less like to keep to themselves when you get to this age, know what I mean?" he answered.
"When we get there, the sun'll be right out. And shine on all of us," he said.
At Arlington, the bus driver found a place to park, and 15 vets from the Home slowly got off and more slowly made their way along the walks to the memorial site. A few got lost in the crowd, but eventually they found one another again. They took seats down front in the amphitheater.
William Jefferson Clinton laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns, on the other side of the amphitheater. There were tunes by the U.S. Marine Band. There was the procession of colors. There were introductions and welcoming remarks. The president spoke. He paid much tribute, and ushered stern warning to Saddam Hussein that he best not defy U.N. weapons inspectors. It was past noon now. Some old guys, sleepy, hungry, living in a home off North Capitol Street, located their bus and rode back across the Potomac. They'd missed lunch. But that was okay. They'd remembered their stories, and the stories were forever.