HYDEN, Ky. (WYMT) - A Korean War Veteran was finally laid to rest at the Kentucky Veterans Cemetery Southeast in Hyden.
Rodgers Fields was 20-years-old when he served his country. The Perry County native was reported Missing in Action during the war.
75 years later, his body was returned to the mountains.
Welcome home PFC Fields, thank you for your service.
ReplyDeleteRest in Peace sir
JD
...was 20 years old when he served the military industrial complex and the murderous politicians...there, fixed it for you.
ReplyDeleteThis isn't about politics or anything else, it's about a soldier's sacrifice and his return home.
DeleteThere, I fixed it back, asshole.
How low of a piece of shit can someone be to dump on this man's moment..
DeleteHave some fucking respect you useless turd
JD
Shut the fuck up asshole. When you're not part of the 1% that serves your country, you nothing to say. Asshole.
DeleteGrateful for his service and his return home. But there is so much this story lacks. Where were his remains found? What was his mission when he disappeared?
ReplyDeleteFinally back in his mountains. Thank you Sir.
ReplyDeleteWirecutter, What follows is long, so long I've had to post it in bits. I don't want to hijack your blog, but I think this fits. It's been what, 17 years, and I still tear up when I remember it. I leave it up to your judgement as to whether or not it gets posted.
ReplyDeleteSergeant David K. Cooper was mortally wounded by small arms fire while on dismounted patrol in Qadasiyah, Iraq. He died of these wounds in Baghdad on 27 August, 2008.
On Sunday, 7 September, Sergeant Cooper was laid to rest in Jellico,Tennessee, following funeral services in nearby Williamsburg, Kentucky. The Patriot Guard attended the services and provided escort from the funeral home to the cemetery at the family's request.
I am not a regular member of the Patriot Guard. I am a resident of Williamsburg, and asked permission from the Ride Captain to stand with the Guard and to ride escort, both of which were granted. We arrived at the funeral home shortly after noon and established a flag line (riders holding 3 x 5 American flags on staves) on the perimeter of the funeral home parking lot, facing the area reserved for the threatened protest by the Westboro Church cultists. I wasn't at the airport when Sergeant Cooper's casket arrived on Thursday, but I am told that four of these horrible people did show up there.
There was little traffic in downtown Williamsburg on a Sunday afternoon; the churchgoers had already headed home by the time we deployed, and most folks were about getting their Sunday dinners. We stood vigil until the funeral party had arrived and the service got under way, shortly after 2:00 p.m. It was very hot and muggy, very uncomfortable. Keep that in mind; it will become apparent why I tell you this.
Part 2:
ReplyDeleteOnce the service finished and we had paid our respects to Sergeant Cooper and his family, we formed another flag line around the rear of the funeral home and the hearse. This is done in case there are any protestors who want to disrupt the ceremony or hurl curses at the family of the deceased. It is the Patriot Guards' desire to interpose themselves between the family and those who have no respect for the dead, that instead of seeing hatred and vitriol, they will see respectful flag-bearers. We were fortunate that no incidents occurred during the service. With this complete, we stowed flags and mounted up to escort Sergeant Cooper to the cemetery in Jellico, some fifteen miles away, right about 3:30 p.m.
We couldn't see Main Street from where we staged the bikes or from either of the flag lines. As we turned on to Main I felt a surge of anger.
Williamsburg, like a lot of small towns, holds a Fall Festival—here it is called “Old Fashioned Trade Days.” They close off Main Street, put up a lot of canopied booths and display their quilts and pickles, raffle off a shotgun or two, and fill up on carnival food. Trade Days began on 4 September and ran through Sunday. When we turned on to Main, there were the canopies, there were the people. I thought to myself, “Aw dammit! Can't these people show some respect?!”
And then I saw that they weren't looking at quilts or buying Polish sausages. They lined the streets four and five deep, almost all of them holding American flags or signs expressing their gratitude to Sergeant Cooper or their condolences for his family. There was no festival atmosphere in the crowd, no jaunty waving of flags, no rah-rah momentary patriotism.
This was a community bidding farewell to one of their own sons.
Part 3:
ReplyDeleteWe rode on through downtown and crossed the tracks and climbed the hill that runs parallel to the University of the Cumberlands campus. The crowd had grown thinner as we got close to the tracks, but only because there aren't many good places to stand right there. As we approached campus the numbers picked back up again, students and townies standing together to honor a fallen soldier. There were no student protestors. We rode between packed sidewalks up to the traffic light by the high school, turned left and proceeded to link up to Kentucky Highway 92. The crowd thinned out at this point; only the occasional house owner stood in his yard or on his porch as we passed. We turned on to Highway 92, then on to US Highway 25W, the old main road from Williamsburg to Jellico.
Another huge crowd of mourners greeted us as we reached this corner, packed into the parking lot of the Dollar General Store and the Save-a-Lot grocery and the car dealership. A ladder truck (from the nearby town of Corbin, I think) was parked there, ladder extended and flying a flag the size of a pickup truck. We rode between packed crowds for the better part of a mile before getting out of Williamsburg.
But at each little community between Williamsburg and Jellico there was another solemn crowd. Each volunteer fire department we passed had their engine run out, their flag at half mast, and their volunteers turned out and rendering honors as we passed. Every little crossroads had a knot of mourners standing vigil. In some places it was a single individual or single family, solemnly holding a flag and standing to honor Sergeant Cooper.
As we crossed into Tennessee we ran into packed sidewalks again, thousands of people in Jellico lined up to pay their respects as the hearse passed. We escorted the graveside party through town and up to the high and lonesome cemetery where, with a guard of honor from the Whitley County Junior ROTC program, a funeral detail of Army Regulars, and full military ceremony, Sergeant David K. Cooper was returned to the native soil from which he had sprung 25 years earlier.
I was honored to be allowed to pay my respects and stand vigil over this young man. I was touched by the quiet dignity with which his family endured the services and laid their son and brother to rest. But my heart was both broken and mended by the public display of respect and shared grief that attended Sergeant Cooper's funeral.
It was hot Sunday. It was muggy in the way that only the American Southeast can produce. The service itself ran long at the funeral home. These people who lined the streets and the highway stood in that heat for a couple of hours, all for the brief moment in which they could pay their respect to the family as the funeral procession passed by.
And there were thousands of them. Williamsburg is a town of perhaps 1,500 people. Jellico is about the same size. Yet there were literally thousands of people turned out to honor this young man.
And they were sincere. David K. Cooper was not a Medal of Honor winner, nor a distinguished general with decades in uniform, nor a veteran who had returned to his home town and spent years in public service. He wasn't a celebrity. He was just one of us.
Just. One. Of. Us.
And so we honored his passing. Even if we had never met him in life, we wept the tears as if we were laying our own blood and our own bone to rest. We stood in solemn review as he passed by. We felt the grief in a young life ended, but that grief was tempered with the fierce pride in a young life not wasted.
To those who think America has lost its way, you should have been there; you would have seen the soul of a people reaching out to hold those who grieve.
To those who think America has lost its heart, you should have been there; you would have seen the beating heart of the nation pulsing deep and true.
Dammit, Dusty in here.
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